Poisoned Hearts
by FlamesEmbrace
Summary: The last two surviving saiyans become the last hope for the universe and find themselves irrevokably drawn between good and evil and towards each other. Experimentations with the GokuVegeta pairing. Complete.
1. On Nightmares

**Poisoned Hearts**

_By Ember_

**Warnings**: Yaoi/slash/homosexuality, sexual content, violence, profanity.... maybe some more. Pay attention, you'll figure them all out by the time it's finished...

**A/N**: Alrighty. Some of you may be wondering: "Ember, if you haven't watched this show in years, why are you writing a fanfic?"

To that, I answer: "Because I can!"

Also because: A. I missed Ky'ale and I couldn't put her into any other theme I could think of, though I am working on an original story about kairn; B. I've always loved the Vegeta/Goku pairing and I could never find a fanfic I actually liked about it, as most of them I've read- none on this site- mutilate Vegeta's character; C. This pairing seemed like a fun challenge; and D. I wanted to.

Below lyrics and above title coutesy of AFI- mourn Davey Havok's throat cancer!- and 99 of below characters belong to whoever wrote DragonBall Z. Ky'ale, however, is © me, and you may not have her. Enjoy, and remember to review! I really like hearing what you think! Really! I do! ...Please?

Update: Have to replace ALL the chapters, because website, which does not show its own URL, also apparently doesn't show asteriks.

--

Walked away, heard them say

Poisoned hearts will never change

Walked away, again

Turned away, in disgrace

Felt the chill upon my face

Through the clouds, within

--AFI "The Leaving Song Part 2"

Part One

Chapter One

On Nightmares

--

Not for the first time, not for the last time, that month or week or even night, Vegeta dreamed. His eyes were shut tightly, the thick brows tense, his unconscious mind squeezing the lids together as if he could shut out the images that swam through his head. Images of lives that were, that had once been, that _should_ have been but never had the chance to, lives that were laughing, mocking parodies of his own. In his sleep, Vegeta murmured words unintelligible, and turned over, the sheet of his bed tangling quickly in his legs, sweat beading on his forehead and running into the cover of his pillow.

_Why didn't you kill me?_

--

Ky'ale sat up, her eyes opened wide but the pupils shrunken to thin lines of gold in the sea of black iris and creamy white in the blazing morning sunlight streaming through the window. They squeezed shut as she yawned, her great heavy muzzle opening to display long lines of sharp teeth, and her back arched as she stretched, cat-like, taloned forelegs held out in front of her. Vegeta's room- therefore her own room- faced east, where the sun rose every day on earth and baked the stone and soil to a heat-soaked brown. She shook like the huge beast she was, like a dog trying to get dry, loosening the tawny fur and flapping her feline ears back and forth. Her cougar-like face pointed to the sun, watching the yellow star ascend higher and higher in the blue sky. Huge, forward-curving, ram-like horns, sprouting from behind her ears, raked over her eyes and shone ivory in the morning light. She lifted one taloned foreleg, her cheetah-like body folding to settle on her haunches, fluffy tail wrapping around hind paws, spine curved like a housecat's. For a moment, she regarded the earth spread below her, then turned her long neck to look over her shoulder at the Prince, who still lay haphazardly on the sheets of his bed.

_ i Poor Vegeta. He hasn't slept well at all, these past few nights._ /i The kairn bodyguard raked her gold-pupiled eyes over the saiyan, her whiskered lips twitching. i _It's not surprising, I suppose. He's had his world turned upside down, but he won't accept it. My poor, stupid, arrogant prince._ /i The fine-boned face had large, plum-colored circles under the closed eyes, the hair, while still completely vertical, was frayed and split, and there were definite lines forming that traced the Prince's cheeks from his nostrils to the corners of his mouth. i _Vegeta's still young, and he's a saiyan. Saiyans are a race of warriors, they age slowly, but he's already looking like a human of his age._ /i Vegeta had been fanatical about destroying the saiyan Kakarotto since he'd been given a chance to repent and survive by the lower-born saiyan and his friends. The offer had stung Vegeta in more ways than one, and Ky'ale had seen it in his eyes. First of all, he'd been beaten by a saiyan of lower birth and lesser training, and had almost been killed by him. Second of all, he'd been regarded as so little threat that he'd been gifted his life. Third of all, and most hurtful, most damaging, the aspect that most crushed the saiyan Prince's pride- he'd taken the offer. He lay now in Kakarotto's friend's house, having aided them in defeating the Emperor Frieza and been brought back to life by them and given their food and their shelter and their grudging, hesitant, rather fearful acceptance. He hated it. Hated the charity, hated that he needed it, hated that no matter what he did, the one who had put him in that position was still stronger than him, still hovering right over his head.

_ i Hating, without a doubt, that it bothers him this much. That he cannot sleep for the dreams that plague him. Kakarotto, Goku, whatever they call you, can't you see that saving his life did no favors for my Prince? /i _ And yet what could she say? She would have done the same thing; she was Vegeta's bodyguard, and it was more than her duty, it was her life summed up into one goal- keep the Prince Vegeta alive. All of her training, both in telepathic and physical skills and fighting, all of her lessons in history and reading, all of her jobs and all of her discussions and every hour of sleep and every time she pissed was just so she could protect the saiyan Prince, just so she could make sure that he stayed alive. She'd failed that, once, twice, though the first time he had not actually died, but had come rather too close for comfort, and twice he had still survived. i _And so Vegeta owes Goku his life. And he hates it. /i _

The kairn sighed and trotted to the door, slipping through the heavy cat-door Bulma's shrunken father had installed when Ky'ale had expressed her concerns as to how, precisely, she was going to move around this house. Her talons, while dexterous enough the hold onto a large item and certainly sharp enough to disembowel, were not nearly delicate enough to twist the doorknob and the scales failed to give her a good grip on the smooth metal even when she _did_ manage to wrap the toes around it. The cat door was large enough for her four-foot frame to fit through it- four feet at the shoulder, a solid six at the top of her head, her neck flexible and long- but the flap was far too heavy for a dog or another of the family's pets to get through it, and the beasts were sufficiently terrified of Vegeta that few of them tried.

Bulma greeted Ky'ale, with some trepidation, as she bounded down the three flights of stairs, simply leaping off the top of the last and landing with grace and silence on the landing. As she paraded into the kitchen, where the blue-haired scientist and her shrunken little father were surreptitiously sipping from steaming mugs of pungent coffee, her talons clicked on the hardwood and her long tail swished back and forth.

"Good morning," the humans each said in turn. Ky'ale settled onto her haunches and carefully groomed an immaculate talon, replying, "Is it?" around her flat tongue. The question was an obvious hint, or so she thought, but Bulma only shrugged slightly and took another sip.

After a long moment, the kairn sighed exaggeratedly and limply fell onto her side in a feline fashion, curling into a ball and glaring up at the two humans. "You don't have anything for me for breakfast, do you?"

The older human remained silent, and Bulma only shrugged again. When Ky'ale sighed again, she pointedly glared at her and drained the rest of the coffee in her mug. "I don't stock up on enough bleeding animal parts so you can eat to your heart's content morning, noon, and night," she replied, scathingly.

Affronted, Ky'ale's tail lashed back and forth. "Well, I don't-"

"Shut up, Ky'ale." The words, the tone, and the voice were all so familiar Ky'ale had fallen silent before her mind had even processed the statement. Her long neck turned, golden eyes fixed on the short saiyan striding down the hallway with the air of a man who owned it. It took a moment for one to look past the aura of sheer arrogance Vegeta cloaked himself with, but Bulma and Ky'ale were both very efficient at it by then. He looked just as bad awake as he had asleep; worse, even, for the general discontent of his sleeping face was replaced by an irritation that was flatly frightening, like a huge amount of gunpowder surrounded by perpetually lit matches floating in circles around the mound.

"Bad night?" Bulma asked, off-handedly, straightening a newspaper she held in one hand.

"Shut up, woman," Vegeta snarled in the exact same tone he had used to silence Ky'ale. For the third time, Bulma's shoulders moved in the almost unnoticeable half-shrug. As the woman's father politely excused himself, vacating a seat for Vegeta, the saiyan poured himself a cup of coffee- without asking, which Bulma decided to ignore- and, ignoring the empty chair, leaned against the wall to drink from it.

"I'm hungry," Ky'ale said, carefully controlling her voice to keep any whining tone from pushing a match closer to the gunpowder. Vegeta's gaze flicked to her, but there was no irrational anger in his eyes. "Eat a dog," he said, blandly.

Bulma glared at Ky'ale, obviously daring her to do any such thing. For a moment, Ky'ale considered taking the dare; she was hungry enough and certainly not scared of Bulma. But she thought better of it in another moment. The human was weak, but she was manipulative, and Capsule Corp was her and Vegeta's home for the moment. Until they could find the Dragonballs and make Vegeta immortal.

Which could take years. She would maintain the goodwill of Bulma and her idiotic parents until then. Ignoring her empty stomach, she twitched her tail and, after a moment of indignant glowering at first Bulma, then the unaffected Vegeta, she rose in one fluid motion and made for the door. "I'll find _something_," she said aloud to anyone who cared, which seemed to be a group completely excluding the saiyan and human. One black-and-white cat seemed to listen, settled onto it's belly with its tail curled around it.

To only Vegeta, via the telepathy that was her specialty, Ky'ale drawled, _"They have to have food where they keep Kakarotto, yes? If he eats anywhere near as much as the rest of you saiyans."_

A spark of irritation came through the invisible link at the mention of Kakarotto's name- and his further charity- but the general tone of Vegeta's thoughts conveyed something very similar to one of his hardly-perceptible shrugs. _"Eat the half-blood,"_ he suggested, dryly, just as Ky'ale left CC.

----

Sweat ran between Goku's eyes, warm and wet and gritty against his skin. The air around him was salty and he could taste his own exertion with every breath. The world seemed clearer, times like these. The slight, constant ache in the muscles of his arms and shoulders grounded him, kept him from floating away in the sensation that the world had narrowed down to and the calculation that constantly flowed like water through his mind. His body moved naturally, taking impact upon impact on his arms and knees and protecting his chest and face and groin from the attacks that moved in a constantly re-arranging pattern of feints and strikes and motions to defense. The only thing there was to think about was the slight pulse of energy that he held inside his body, nourishing, readying for the opportune moment. When it came, it would vanish almost instantaneously; he had to be ready before then. He _was_ ready before then. He took in lungful after ragged lungful of air, not even noticing how in-sync it was with the other pattern of breath close to him. The clarity of the universe had narrowed down to his own body, his own actions in constant reactions to those of his opponent. He barely had mind enough on the enemy itself to hold back.

The opportunity came suddenly and he almost missed it; he grabbed the wrist of the bunched fist flying for his stomach and pushed it back, but instead of pulling his arm back to his side his opponent flailed backwards, losing a bit of ground and putting space enough between Goku and his enemy that he had just enough time, acting quickly, to finish the fight in a blaze of light energy.

The opponent's body hit the ground with a thud. Goku lowered himself to the ground and held out a hand, quickly grasped by a clawed hand with green skin, and helped Piccolo to his feet. The Namic looked down with distaste at the dirt on his clothes and brushed them off, none the worse for wear if one overlooked the bruises and the fact that Piccolo had trouble moving his right shoulder too much. Goku's shoulders and back twinged painfully, but it was the only real hurt he had, the rest mostly superficial. He shrugged the slight hurts off, wiping the sweat from his brow and relishing the feeling of total drain that made his arms and legs feel slack against his sides. "Good workout," he said, simply, brushing his bangs out of his eyes.

Piccolo nodded, smiling for a moment before relaxing against a cairn of stone that jutted from the ground of Goku's favorite training spot. "Gohan couldn't come?"

"Chichi wouldn't let him," the saiyan replied apologetically, shrugging. "She wanted him to study, not turn into... well, she said she didn't want him to turn out like me." His radiant grin expressed clearly that he didn't think she was being serious; Piccolo had a lot more faith in Chichi's sobriety. "I told her that he could both train to be a fighter and study, but she seems to think that I'd keep him from school and books to learn how to fight. That I have 'no sense of priority,' and I'd make him follow in my footsteps."

"Hell forbid," Piccolo intoned dryly, folding his arms behind his head, against the stone, "that schoolwork should take second-place to saving the world."

Goku frowned. "Hopefully," he said, slowly, "we won't have to save the world any more, Piccolo. I mean, it's good to be ready, and everything, but.... maybe no one else will be a danger to earth. I mean, Frieza is gone, isn't he? Who else would be a threat?"

There are some people in the world who live life like they're cued in on everything, and the lines of life are written out on cards held where no one but they can see them. Ky'ale was one of those people. Right on cue, she appeared behind Goku- truly appeared, for while physically she wasn't as strong as Vegeta and telepathically she was far from the strongest of what her kin was capable of, Ky'ale was as fast as anyone else Piccolo had ever known- and, sitting cat-like on her haunches, regarded first Piccolo, then Goku with her gold-pupiled eyes.

Fate had sent many messages to Goku over the years. It must have gotten very frustrated with him more than once. "Hi, Ky'ale," he said, jovial, grinning electrically at her.

_Who else _would_ be a threat, Goku? I can name two._

Ky'ale's voice was a sigh; her strange, slightly hissing accent formed by the flat tongue in her mouth stressed the syllabents on her words. "Morning, Goku, Piccolo."

"It's not really morning anymore, Ky'ale," Goku pointed out with another grin. "I'm thinking about going back home for a lunch break if Piccolo's about done for the session."

This time, Ky'ale really did sigh, her ears pinned back. "And I haven't eaten breakfast," she said ruefully, and by the tone of her voice she found it a horrible crime against nature. Piccolo's stomach turned at the thought of food, and Goku's growled in agitation at the thought of skipping breakfast.

"You could come with me," Goku offered, smiling; Piccolo shook his head slightly, wondering at how quickly Goku had come to trust the kairn and saiyan prince. He must know, even with Goku's intelligence, that Ky'ale was nothing more, not really, than an extension of Vegeta's eyes and ears, and that everything she saw or heard would be translated back to the prince, and that anything Vegeta could use to get an advantage over Goku or to get the immortality he craved he would use. But he didn't seem to care; he talked freely with both of them. Piccolo said nothing, not in Ky'ale's presence.

Ky'ale grinned, her ears perking up again. "Do you have food?" she asked, happily. "Good food? Bulma's a vegetarian." Her eyes narrowed to slits and her ears pressed back again, tail lashing. "Or at least, so it seems sometimes. I think the blonde woman _is_, and there's nothing good ever in that whole house."

"I'm sure we'll have something," Goku said cheerfully. "Or you can eat Krillin."

"Happily," Ky'ale replied, a toothy grin opening her jaw as she followed Goku walking towards his home. Piccolo shook his head and, with a wave, began walking back to his own home. Goku waved back, talking with the kairn. If Vegeta had developed an antiphony against Goku, than Ky'ale had developed an abhorrence against Krillin. Not, Piccolo thought wryly, that he really blamed the cat.

Goku talked cheerfully, and Ky'ale, not for the first time, wondered what existed between his temples. If not a vacuum, which had been her initial thought before his fighting abilities proved there must be _something_ there, then what could it possibly be? Anything with more mass than a walnut shell _had_ to produce more valid thoughts than whatever existed in there. By the time they reached Goku's tiny house, eventually having flown the majority of the way, Goku had talked for a full ten minutes without saying a damn thing. Ky'ale shrugged her vertical shoulders as much as she could while landing. _He has food. I can smell it in his house._

"Ky'ale!" The kairn couldn't help it; her massive maw split into a slight grin at the voice. A smaller version of Goku with slightly different hair- and his mother's larger eyes, of course, round and dark- hurled himself out of the house and ran down the path, grinning ear to ear. The others of Goku's little force very grudgingly accepted her, despite their intimate knowledge of her ultimate loyalty to the saiyan prince, should - or when- it should come down to it, but Gohan, after weeks of fighting beside her and Vegeta with only Krillin also present on Namic, had become the closest thing to a friend she had, excluding whatever Vegeta was to her. The child wrapped his short arms around her neck and grinned up at her, rather like a boy would to a favorite pet.

She laughed, a deep, growl-like sound within her throat. "Hello, Go-"

"Gohan!" The voice was shrill and Ky'ale winced away from the door at the sharp snap. "Gohan, get away from- come here! You have to finish studying!"

"He's earned a lunch break by now, surely," Goku put in, pleadingly, gazing imploringly at his wife. "I'm hungry and Ky'ale skipped breakfast, and we could use something to eat. If... you know.... you'd cook it for us." He was stammering by the end. Ky'ale winced. She dreaded her confrontations with Chichi and had been hoping that this meeting would be like the one before it, with she and the human shrew pointedly ignoring each other until the duration of their time forced together had passed. But the moment Goku had mentioned her name she felt the snake-like black eyes- large and round and dark like the half-breed child's but rimmed with human bitterness- land on her and knew she wasn't going to be so lucky this time.

If Gohan was her friend and Goku liked her, and the rest of them accepted her and Vegeta used her and felt a grudging kinship with her and might have cared for her as a friend for all she knew, Chichi refused to be duped even to the extent of Piccolo and Krillin and Yamcha and the others, and outright loathed her. She hated Ky'ale more than Vegeta, for reasons Ky'ale didn't understand on any level other than Chichi hated that Ky'ale was used as a puppet for the saiyan prince. That the kairn _knew_ she was being used and let it happen as if she didn't have any sense of self.

"Well, Goku, I'm going to make your lunch when I'm finished tutoring your son and it would be nice if you would offer to help, for once, instead of going off to play with your friends more often than you spend time with the woman you married. And as for Ky'ale..." It began. Ky'ale sat on her haunches and bore it.

Goku sighed, not really listening to his wife berate the kairn bodyguard. The problem with Chichi was, she wasn't a fighter. She wouldn't understand the whole air of fighting, the satisfaction when your body moved automatically and you felt the jolt of a hit being taken on your arm, blocked successfully. The knowledge that _you_ conditioned it to behave like that, to move without being told to. She didn't understand the thrill of seeing an opening and the intense reward of hitting the open spot with just enough force to break through your opponent's guard. She didn't understand the elements that made him Goku, at least not the way Piccolo and Krillin and Master Roshi did. Even Vegeta understood; sometimes, Vegeta understood too well for Goku's comfort.

Which got him started on an entirely different note. _Saiyan._ A year ago- or was it two years, now?- he wouldn't have had a clue what the word meant. A nonsense word. Now he _was_ a saiyan, and the friend of a saiyan and the son of a saiyan and the word still made no sense. _I'm not Vegeta. I'm nothing like him. I'm not really a saiyan, not at heart; at heart, I'm a human. Saiyans are warriors, that's all they are, they're nothing but how well they fight. I'm more than that. I'm a human at heart._

And then he remembered the thrill of finding the perfect opening and the satisfaction of taking it, and way his mind cleared and the world became black-and-white perfection while the sweat slid in wonderful clarity down his face. _I'm more than that._ Wasn't he?

Gohan had returned to the house to finish one more page before Chichi would consent to cooking- and to sharing a little bit of uncooked meat with the persuasive Ky'ale. The kairn, at first glance, would appear very proud of herself, sitting regally with her tail curled tightly around her talons, her eyes partially closed. But if someone let it, one could hear her speaking telepathically with Gohan, quickly giving him the answers. _"On one plane, lines have to be parallel or intersect. Gods, human geometry is primitive. You haven't even come up with a concept for the fourth dimension yet! It starts, see, with the properties of skew planes..."_


	2. On Zoology

**A/N:** Okay, a quick thingy on Kairn. For those who care. Those who don't, just skip this; it's not important. Kairn are my own creatures, having the body of a cheetah, the forelegs ending at the elbow in bird-like talons. But thicker. Those who know what gryphons are will comprehend and get cookies. They have long, fluffy tails- at least, the females do, and Ky'ale's the last, so that's all you need to worry about- and long necks, with cougar-like heads, pointed ears, and forward-curving, ram-like horns. The horns do not curve around completely, though; about 270 degrees, I guess. I'll get a piccie if someone wants one.

They were their own culture before they were conquered by the saiyans and formed a sort of treaty between the two races.... Politics were never my strong point, but basically the kairn serve as footsoldiers and bodyguards in return for the preservation of their planet and culture. As strong telepaths and telekinetics, and naturally the fastest on average of the known races, they soon elevated to mainly bodyguard rank, and as both saiyan and their feline counterparts were decimated more and more by Freiza, the remaining kairn were strictly guards of the more important saiyan figures. When the saiyans went over to the Empire, the kairn, which had gotten to be a sort of auxilarary race of saiyan, of course went with them and served basically the same purpose for Frieza, though their loyalty remained with the saiyans. Their ranks thinned immensely in the expanded service and the last to be born was Ky'ale, when Vegeta was nine. When she was a year and a half, she was given into the service of the saiyan prince, and began training to be his bodyguard. She lived in the same little-metal-room we all associate with Vegeta's childhood (that was in the series, I believe, or I might have made it up...), and trained in not only fighting and metal ability, but in other, more mundane lessons such as reading and vaious languages. The rest of the kairn were destroyed during the saiyan rebellion.

For those wondering why I go so very in-depth, it's because Ky'ale and her kind were in my mind for about five years, now, only changing a little in all that time. So I've been contemplating her for some time, yeah.

_Chapter Two_

_On Zoology_

--

Vegeta narrowed his thin black eyes at Ky'ale, who shook herself as she slowly, painfully rose from steel floor of the Gravity Room. Slowly, because the gravity was already at five hundred times earth's, and painfully, because Vegeta had just won his third consecutive spar. She felt like every bone in her body had broken and it was likely that at least four had, and every inch of her skin was going to be black and blue tomorrow, hidden though it was by her golden fur. Every inch of her skin was black and blue _now_, after their workout all that morning and most of the afternoon, and after the day before's workout, and the day before that, and the day before that....

"For gods' sakes, Ky'ale, can't you do better than that?" A month ago, it would have been a taunt. Now, it was truly tinged with anger and Ky'ale hesitated, one talon held up in a parody of a charge. Vegeta had started to dodge but stopped with his opponent, hovering a foot from the steel floor. The Gravity Room was at once the one place where Vegeta practically lived, since Bulma had built it, and at the same time made him fiercely bitter. More charity from people that he would have, could have, should have, been about to, kill, from the people who had stopped him from doing so. More condescending charity. He knew they hated him, he knew because he hated them, and that hate would have been easy to bear if they would admit it. But they wouldn't; they wouldn't fight him or even scream at him or threaten him, they only nodded and pretended to accept him and gave him food and shelter and exhausted themselves to make him at home.

It would have been easy to accept _that_, if there's been pattern to it. If they had done it to appease him, to keep their pathetic world safe. They hadn't. They'd done it because they thought of him as a reclusive, somewhat less than trustworthy member of their _group,_ their _club,_ and he was accepted because Goku said he was accepted and that was that.

_Goku_. Suspended in midair, Vegeta felt his fists clench and his face turn suddenly black and furious, thinking of the lesser-born saiyan. Damn him, damn him to the darkest hell and may the damned souls he killed tear him apart limb from limb. Kakarotto didn't do it because someone else accepted Vegeta. He did it because _he_ accepted him, thought of him as a friend, as a brother, as an ally.

Vegeta didn't _want_ to be accepted. He didn't _want_ a friend, he wanted this idiot, this inbred hybrid of human morals and saiyan strength to move out of his way, to stop challenging him without even knowing what he was doing. This low-born cretin was more powerful than the Prince of Saiyans; this creature whose power came from talent and training had reached the ultimate level of power far before the prince who spent his whole life obsessing over obtaining strength. Goku had remained happy, had gotten friends and a wife and a family and lived with the people he had cared for all his life. Vegeta had sacrificed everything for power. Every friend, every lover, every family member for physical strength.

And who was the more powerful?

Ky'ale paused, one talon held almost comically in the air, eyes fixed ahead of her. The world turned over for a moment, at Vegeta's biting comment and something like sour bile in her stomach as the earth spun with sudden speed on its axis.

And then time started again and she was hurtling for Vegeta, who had like her paused in midair and couldn't dodge the golden-tan bullet before her talons hit his side.

Streaming blood, Ky'ale hit the steel floor of the Gravity Room, sliding on her talons and paws and wondering for a moment why the blood on her talons didn't smell like her own. Then she realized it was Vegeta's and frowned, the world slowly coming back to its own speed. Slowly, slowly, the churning stopped. But the dripping dark _wrongness_ still lingered in her stomach and throat, fading but omnipresent, glueing golden energy within her into a dark ball of nausea.

Vegeta's eyes were narrowed and his hand clutched torn spandex and bleeding flesh. Ky'ale stared, unseeing, at him, wondering what she had felt and how it was possible. It wasn't possible. Vegeta had felt nothing, had seen nothing, had remained unaffected. Surely, if that had happened, he would notice as well. She would not be the first one. _And it's impossible. It can't happen._

It didn't. She knew, now, with certainty borne of self-denial.

"What the hell?" snarled Vegeta, glaring at her, glaring at the blood that dripped between the fingers clutching his wound. "What were you thinking, cat?"

Impossible. It couldn't happen. Her cougar maw split into a wide grin. "Was that 'doing better,' Vegeta?" she asked, tauntingly.

--

Goku turned over, moaning, in bed, disturbed from his sleep by a bright light through the window. And, though less disturbed by it, the impact of something hard and possibly metal drumming again and again against his shoulder. He made a weak motion, trying to get it to go away so he could go back to sleep.

Suddenly, he was seeing stars and rolling over onto the hard floor and his head was throbbing softly in the background. Rubbing the back of his skull and sitting up on the floor, the sheets draping over his otherwise almost naked form, he wailed indignantly while looking around for his unseen attacker.

Chichi, brandishing what he had to assume was the very ladle that had hit against his shoulder so many times and finally had merely thwaked him over the brow while the human woman was shoving him off the bed, hit the metal spoon against her palm while looming over the opposite edge of the bed. Goku's clothes of the day- _not, _he noticed, training clothes- were folded up on the bed in pristine neatness. Gohan was perching on the foot of the bed and watched the whole precession with a gleeful smile on his face.

"Morning," Goku said, piecing together a bit of cheer and grinning up at his wife and son.

"Get dressed," Chichi said, scoldingly.

"Good morning!" Gohan said happily, his tail twitching back and forth. Goku noticed with grim anxiety his son's tail had grown back. _Full moon's not for another few weeks. We don't have to take care of it _yet._ We'll wait until he's asleep._ Gohan's tail was particularly sensitive and it hurt him a lot to have it removed.

"You're not running off to train this morning," Chichi said commandingly. "You're taking Gohan to the zoo; you hardly spend any time with him that's not trying to break his skull open or getting him to do the same to you. And the zoo is-"

"Educational." Goku spoke the word wearily, but he pulled on the clothes Chichi had laid out for him. Every place Chichi picked for Gohan to go to had to be educational. He wondered, vaguely, if he would have ever agreed to go to the zoo with the man he had always thought of as his grandfather- the man who _was_ his grandfather, even if only to him- had told him he was learning from it. He didn't think so.

"Precisely." Chichi turned in a huff, returning to the kitchen, where the mingled smells of breakfast were floating into the other rooms. Gohan remained on his perch, grinning; he didn't care whether he was learning or training or what. Goku smiled and ruffled his hair, and he laughed and dodged from under his father's hand. "Hurry!" he called, dancing after his mother. "I want to go to the zoo!"

Goku's hair needed remarkably little care. As a matter of fact, it stayed in its physically impossible pose, keeping its softness and remaining tangle-free, whether he was fighting or sleeping or, the few times he had experienced it, dead. All he had to do was pull on his clothing and follow his son, throwing himself into his chair and waiting for Chichi to serve him breakfast. The clock above the oven pronounced it two o'clock, which meant he had slept a lot later than he had meant to but his superficial injuries had taken more out of him than he had wanted. Bulma had told him many times he could come over and use Vegeta's re-gen tank whenever he wanted and everyone agreed that it was as much his as Vegeta's, but somehow he didn't think his arrival would make Vegeta very happy.

_Vegeta._ Goku stifled a sigh and paused in his normally furious eating. He wished the older saiyan would relax. Every time he saw him, he wished he would relax. _Piccolo was never this much of a problem. He gets along fine with Gohan and even the rest of us, when he wants, but Vegeta only sulks around and threatens to destroy us all. He has Ky'ale, but I don't even know if he knows she's a living being. I don't know if _she_ knows she's a living being. And aside from her, he doesn't have _any_ friends. He doesn't _want_ any friends._ He knew why, and he didn't want to know why, because he wasn't a saiyan, he was a human. He didn't want to understand, but he did. _He thinks it will weaken him. Having someone to fight for will weaken him. He wants to be alone, isolated, and not have a foothold from which someone can hit him._ He felt sorry for him, he did. He knew it wasn't what Vegeta wanted but he pitied him all the same. Wanted to tell him that there was nothing weak about having a reason to fight, there was nothing there to drag you down. And he knew Vegeta knew it because he felt Vegeta's eyes on his back, watching him grow increasingly strong and never giving up the things Vegeta had sacrificed in his never-ending quest for power.

He sighed and finished his breakfast, leaning back in his seat. Chichi frowned at him, her dark eyes narrowed. "Something wrong?" she asked, neutrally.

Gohan had run back to his room to find a camera and Goku was glad of the opportunity to talk to his wife alone. Chichi wasn't a fighter and didn't understand Vegeta, but she had the remarkable gift of looking at things from the outside in and somehow hitting the heart of the matter way before anyone who knew all of the facts. Come to think of it, that seemed a fact trademark of women; Bulma had it too. "Vegeta," was all he said, leaning back against the backrest of his chair and letting his head relax until it was almost perpendicular to the chair's backing.

Chichi snorted, moving with unconscious grace, cleaning up and putting away leftovers. "What's there to worry about?" she asked. "You're good enough to guard the earth against Vegeta."

"Not significantly." And it was true; Vegeta thought the difference between their strengths was a lot larger than it really was. "And anyway, that's not what I'm worrying about."

One thin eyebrow lurched a little higher in Chichi's face. "Then what are you worrying about?" she asked. Goku felt a little bit of irritation, like an itch he couldn't scratch, rise at her cold words. "Don't worry about the Prince of all Saiyans himself. He's likely to be an enemy again in a year, and if you aren't careful-" one dark eye gleamed- "an immortal one."

Goku's brow furrowed a little bit in surprise and very faint anger that his wife so blatantly refused to understand. She got this way about Gohan's training, too. He shrugged it off and smiled brightly at her. "You can't be sure," he pointed out, fairly. "People change. Piccolo did. Even Yamcha did a while ago." He bit back a laugh. "Most of us did. Went from evil to good."

Chichi shook her head, black hair waving from side to side. It was heavy on both their minds but neither would mention it. _So did you, Goku. _More... suddenly than the others, more... unintentionally, sure, but the change was there. But Chichi's face was blank as she finished. The irritation spread between Goku's shoulder blades, an itch just in the worst possible position. "Some hearts," she said at last, wiping the counter with a wet cloth, "never change."

Gohan chose that moment to reappear, and his grinning face cut off the response his father was about to make. Goku put a hand on Gohan's shoulder and they talked about training to the door, more in Goku's mind to irritate his wife since he and his son already knew all there was to know about the other's physical strength. But it most certainly did succeed in irritating Chichi, who glared at them until they were out the door and had shut her out of their day by swinging the door closed.

----

Vegeta rubbed his shoulder, scowling, and followed Ky'ale out of the Gravity Room. _She_ was pummeled, and every step was gingerly taken and paid for to excess, as was clear the way her skin shivered with every movement. He couldn't see the lace of bruises across her skin the way he had been able to when she was very young and her golden-tan fur was fine and thin and almost white, but whenever the muscles shifted and pulled her pelt tight or let it fall loose she winced and her golden eyes were shut so tightly that her brow was almost wrinkled. Her ears lay back, pressed against her skull, and the tips brushed her curving gray horns.

_He_ wasn't in fine shape, either. The tears her talons had left along his skin were mostly scabbed over by then but they still hurt like hell and the scarring tissue pulled painfully on the older, more whole skin. He had to get to the re-gen tank pretty soon or the scars would be permanent, forever marking the slight distractions or the bursts of speed that had allowed Ky'ale within his guard. He ran two fingers lightly over a particularly vicious mark and hissed slightly through his teeth at the jolt of pain that suddenly wracked him, traveling over his chest and down his arms and sending lightning bolts of agony down his spine. He didn't hesitate, however, in his gait or wince or even blink; he bore the pain silently as a prince should.

_You're insane._ Ky'ale had told him it many times before. She could probably feel his self-inflicted pain that moment and he was a little surprised that she didn't say it then. _You're an insane bastard,_ she could have said. _You're a masochist. A maddened idiot. What kind of warrior hurts himself as much as anyone else would, just to prove he can take the pain? Just to prove it, of course, to himself._

It took Vegeta a moment to realize that Ky'ale _wasn't_ saying those things to him. He was doing a good enough job saying them to himself. And she, omnipresent in the back of his mind, knew that as well as he.

The sun blacked out for a moment and he froze in a familiar shadow. His hand came up almost mechanically to shield his eyes from the light as he traced the shadow and cursed aloud, not even bothering to mutter the foul words under his breath. Goku was hovering in the air, looking down at them with a smile plastered on his face and if the scathing terms jaded his half-breed son's ears so much the better. The two of them stared down at the two below and suddenly Kakarotto dropped altitude and landed on the balls of his feet right in front of them. Gohan landed less gracefully, compounded by the fact that he was charging for Vegeta's kairn bodyguard.

"Gohan!" cried Ky'ale in slightly less than pure delight. The thin arms wrapped around her long, lithe neck and she yelped softly. "Gohan... nice to- ow! Not.. not there, Gohan... Kakarotto, call off your son!"

Goku laughed quietly and called for Gohan, who peeled himself from Ky'ale's bruised and battered neck and returned, grinning, to his father's side. Neatly, the child bowed to Vegeta. "Hello," he said.

One dark eyebrow rose at the gesture, but Vegeta dismissed it. Kakarotto did not emulate it. He only smiled and spread his arms welcomingly. "We're going to the zoo," he said. And then, though he knew the answer he couldn't stop from asking the question, "Do you want to come?"

The thick eyebrow did not come down from where it poised over Vegeta's dark eye. His expression was otherwise blank, cold. "What the bloody hell is a zoo?"

Ky'ale, who read the dictionary, replied, "It's a prefix. Pertaining to or dealing with animals- other animals, that is, than humans themselves." One pointed ear perked forward. "It's also a park where large animals are kept in small cages for people to gape at until they die and their bloated carcasses are dragged out and fed to the others."

Gohan took a step back, and Goku almost hit the feline who draped herself luxuriously out on the ground and regarded them all through gold-pupiled black eyes. "They _aren't_ small cages," he protested, wondering vaguely if she was right about what they did with the animals once they died.

The cougar-like head tilted to one side. "_You_ don't live in them," she pointed out, coldly. "Fly for three weeks in some spaceship the size of your body curled around itself and tell me that animals are _happy_ in cages." She snorted indignantly and dragged her rough tongue over the scaled side of one talon.

Gohan looked with pleading eyes up at his father and Goku, feeling suddenly responsible for defending the zoo for his son, smiled with full charming intensity at Ky'ale. "Well, of course you were uncomfortable," he said, "but these cages are much bigger. And the animals are fed and kept happy."

Ky'ale looked from his wide smile to Gohan's increasingly hopeful face and sighed. The comforts of earth's animals weren't the most pressing issues on her mind and in less than a year when Vegeta became immortal they'd probably all be ash anyway. She raised her shoulders and let them fall in what passed for a shrug, which was difficult standing and nearly impossible when stretched out. "I suppose," she admitted, ruefully, forfeiting her position.

Vegeta's eyes burned into her with the cold intensity of liquid nitrogen. He cared about the comfort of animals in zoos less than her but it burned him to see Kakarotto win anything, even if the victory was gifted to him by the kairn. Especially then.

Suddenly noticing him again, Goku turned the full intensity of his smile onto the older saiyan. Vegeta looked away, his expression twisted with disgust. _When does a saiyan become... like he has? When does someone with so much potential become something so close to a human?_

"So, do you want to come?" Goku asked, and Gohan looked pleadingly at Ky'ale.

"For fear," she drawled, the accent she usually kept behind her teeth, the accent that drew out her vowels and rolled her 'r's and hissed her syllabants in full force, "that my skin will fall off at the gate, I must refuse, Kakarotto, Gohan." She rose and winced with pain as her muscles pulled her pelt taut again. "Damn. Damn gravity to the bloody rotting hell it came from."

Goku's glare reprimanded her for cursing in front of his son but she barely acknowledged it and the pain evident in her gold-pupiled eyes granted her forgiveness. "If you want, Vegeta, I'll spar with you tomorrow," he offered, putting one hand on Gohan's shoulder as if to protect him from the vile language. Chichi would be most disapproving of the whole situation. She trusted Vegeta less than she trusted Ky'ale, which was very little indeed, and the constant profanity would not raise her opinion of them, putting those words in her child's malleable mind. "Give the cat a break." His grin took on a look of innocent conspiracy and it revolted Vegeta.

He fought down the urge to hit him and restrained the hand that was reaching out without permission to do just that. He still- it hurt to acknowledge it, but if he treated it like he was manipulating, using them, it was easier to bear- needed them, _had a use for them_, and it wouldn't do to wipe out the one tenuous thread connecting him to the rest of them, keeping him from drifting away completely. Kakarotto's charity. And as revolting a handhold as it was, he clung to it.

His next impulse was to accept the offer. He could feel Goku's power even when he wasn't searching for it, even when the other saiyan wasn't standing right before him. It burned just outside of his awareness and he was constantly aware of it, constantly aware of how much stronger the younger saiyan was than himself. He needed that power, needed to practice against someone stronger than himself and for all Ky'ale's speed she would never match up.

But there was one thing he still clung to more than power or strength. He drew himself up with it, stood taller with it- his forehead almost crested Kakarotto's collarbone if he drew himself as high as he could- and backed away, glaring with fierce hatred and his single lifeline to the life of a saiyan prince, the pride that kept him. "No," he snarled, the words dripping with icy loathing. "We're doing very well on our own, Kakarotto."

Kakarotto, he noticed with a wry interest, seemed disturbed by his utter loathing. Not surprised, of course; not even Kakarotto was that thick. But bothered, implacably, and suddenly Vegeta wanted to know why. What did the younger saiyan _want_ of the prince? He was stronger and the better person and the happier one, so what did he want of him? Vegeta's eyes narrowed in unfounded anger.

"So you don't want to come?" Vegeta remembered their previous discussion and where Goku was talking about and didn't even dignify that with a shrug or a response. No, he didn't want to go gawk at caged animals with the idiot and his half-breed. He glared and turned, and Goku and his son rose again in the air.

_What do you want from me?_ he called after them silently.

Letting the fury and his own pride carry him to the door to the Capsule Corp, he set his shoulders and the shields around his mind with firm dignity. It didn't matter, anyway. He didn't care.

------

((Yes, if you're wondering, it's going to take them some time to actually become a pairing. Don't look at me like that. You try and make Vegeta convincingly fall in love with Goku. And with Goku it's a two-step process, falling out of love with one and into love with another. I hate that l-word. Please review. I feel like I'm talking to air, here....))


	3. Madness and Mechanics

**A/N**: A breif summary of kairn, continued...

Okay, we're all clear that saiyans have mild telepathy as well as kairn having extremely high talent in the area. So communication between the two was extremely easy, and as a pair of them spent more time together, the communication would get easier and the flow of thoughts more natural, as passing information from mind-to-mind became second-nature. Soon, it was discovered that designating a bodyguard when both saiyan and kairn are very young makes a very strong bond that induces an almost fanatical loyalty out of the bodyguard. Of course, there are very obvious drawbacks- you don't get the protection you need right away, which could hurt very young heirs, and if a kairn bodyguard grows into a defect or is crippled in some way its still pretty much inseperatable from the saiyan it was charged to. Still, the advantages outweighed the flaws; saiyans are not team players and having a fighter at hand who moves perfectly in sync with you is... good. Moreover, kairn, while living as long as saiyans, grow much faster, reaching physical adulthood at six years and sexual maturity and fifteen. Therefore, those who are good at math will know that Vegeta, at fifteen years six months, was about to come into his own physical maturity when Ky'ale was old enough to take his back.

I'm pretty sure everything else valid is mentioned in the story, so I'll shut up now!

_Chapter Three_

_Madness and Mechanics_

--

Bulma pressed her fingers against her mouth to stifle a yawn, putting down the screwdriver she clutched in her right hand and replacing it with the handle on a mug of coffee, draining a mouthful and putting the half-empty mug back on the table. With a strange obsession common to the very tired, she spent thirty seconds making sure that the bottom rim was lined exactly with the circle of thin moisture the mug had already made on the table, then raised her new invention to eye level and stared into the interweaving circuits. It wasn't too complicated a bit of technology, though it was a pretty bit of mechanics and she had to grin at the workings once she had managed to wrest the half-glasses Raditz had worn away from Roshi for long enough to figure out the workings. Once she had fixed them in the first place she'd had a pretty good idea of what they did, and she allowed herself a self-satisfied grin.

It wasn't completely unlike infrared; it traced a person not only by how much heat they put out but how much light, sound, and the minuscule amounts of gravity, and used it all to determine how much energy, and therefore, how much strength a person contained. It wasn't one-hundred percent accurate, as energy did not translate directly to strength. But there was no one-hundred percent way to measure out someone's skill, and no one knew that better than the woman who had followed Goku the wonder boy around since he was ten. _The hard part isn't remaking what's already there. It's changing it. Making it more useful._ That was also the fun part. Despite her exhaustion- how was she supposed to sleep, anyway, when she could bloody well _hear_ Vegeta moaning in anger in the room a few doors down from her's- she found herself humming, slightly, as she pushed a circuit a little further into the workings, trying to make room to connect a positive and a negative wire over a particular knot of mechanics. Needle-nosed pliers lunged and pulled cheerfully in the fine bits and pieces. Her eyes were narrowed and she was quite certain they had turned bloodshot after a handful of solid hours staring down at the minute details but she didn't really care.

_It'll be worth it, sooner or later. When this thing is finished. It'll be more accurate than the first._ She almost sniffed. _And look a lot less idiotic._

"What the bloody hell are you doing?"

Bulma came within a hair's breadth of ruining every hour of careful work she'd put into the mechanism when she jumped, avoiding plunging the sharp tips of the pliers into the workings by willpower alone. Her front teeth buried into her lower lip, she spun to face Vegeta, who leaned carelessly on the wall, watching her with one thick eyebrow raised. Ky'ale, looking more than a little tired, stretched out behind him and kept one lazy golden eye on the human scientist. Bulma glared at her, silently daring her to shed on anything in her workshop. _And see if I don't flay the damned cat. I've had it with her up to here as it is._

"I'm working, Vegeta." The words were spoke calmly, cooly, a little patronizingly. "You know, for the good of more than just myself. You should try it sometime. It's supposed to be quite-"

He cut her off on 'rewarding' with a stony, cold glare. Bulma insisted to herself it didn't affect her but the word stopped in her mouth and refused to become dislodged from her throat. God, for a shithead alien no more than five feet tall, he was terrifying. Ky'ale had cocked her head in minimal interest, her talons folded over one another speculatively.

"What the hell is that?" The words fell just short of a sneer.

Bulma regained her posture and threw back her shoulders. "This," she said, calmly, "is a modified version of the power radar Freiza created. I'm trying to get it to-"

"Why?" He was Vegeta; his words were frozen twice over and stung. "Your pet saiyan taught the rest of us how to sense power. Why would we need that piece of shit?"

Pet saiyan? The words had been spoken with quite a bit of venom behind and Bulma turned to look at Vegeta, one thin blue eyebrow quirked in an unconscious mimic of his own expression. Why did Goku's personality _bother_ Vegeta so much? She'd heard it all before, heard him growling about the more placid saiyan behind his back and had never really wondered about it before. Vegeta hated Goku, that was that. Now, she wondered. Why?

"What are you doing down here, Vegeta?" He might have seen the other question in her eyes, because he bristled and stiffened and his eyes grew even more impossibly cold. "You've been training all day. You should be tired." It was as much a command as a statement, as if she could _tell_ him to be tired at the end of a long day.

Which, to Vegeta, only reinforced his previous ideas on the infinite idiocy of humans. "I have fought monsters unlike any you have seen before in your life, human," he snarled, but at the moment he couldn't remember a single one of them before Freiza. He wondered, in a disconnected way, why not. "I don't collapse after a few hours' workout."

Ky'ale said nothing, only yawned hugely, her pointed teeth glittering eerily in the dim light of the lamp Bulma had on her table, the only light in the room. The human noticed, with the same disconnected interest Vegeta had invested at his sudden lapse, the urge to echo the yawn was just as strong when the great cat was the one doing it. She kept her mouth pointedly closed.

The saiyan took a step forward and looked over her shoulder at the workings inside the mechanism. Not finding anything to criticize, he merely snorted and glowered back at the scientist. "Why are you making that, if no one needs it?" he asked.

"Not all of us," Bulma replied, turning her back of Vegeta and picking up the pliers again, though she wasn't going to restart the delicate work with Vegeta hovering over her like that, "can read power levels in our heads. And anyway, I plan on this working better."

"What do you mean?" Vegeta didn't look altogether interested- as a matter of fact, he looked like he was contemplating the sounds her skull would make if he were to crush it barehandedly that moment. "Work better? We don't need it at all."

"I'm trying to add other features," Bulma explained, patiently, still toying with the tools. She silently charted where the positive and negative charged wires should connect, making a steady flow of electrical energy to power the mechanics. "Perhaps..." Mentioning what she was going to mention would be a bad idea, but Vegeta had it coming. "Perhaps I'll make it so I can tell power _potential_ as well as current strength. I'd be able to tell if, for instance, Goku could turn into a super-saiyan...."

Just as she had predicted, it was one compound word too many. Vegeta's hand came out of no where and the radar flew from her hand, skidding across the desktop and landing with a disheartening crunch on the floor. Bulma ground her lip between her teeth. It was a tough bit of workings but it hadn't been traveling slowly when it had fallen. She could only hope it hadn't broken as Vegeta leaned in to glower hotly into her eyes, shoulders tense.

"You like rubbing it in, don't you?" he breathed, his words grating in his throat like knives. "You like everyone to know that your pet is stronger than any other saiyan. He's stronger than anyone I've ever seen and you won't let me forget it for a second."

It was the first time Bulma had ever mentioned Goku to Vegeta. The burning fury, such contrast to the cold indifference of a moment ago, send tremors of fear up her spine. Slowly, the ice reclaimed its place in Vegeta's eyes and he drew back, wrapped in cold and superiority, looking unruffled as if the incident had never happened.

_Why does it _bother_ you so much, Vegeta? What the hell makes Goku the enemy? Is it because he beat you once? Then why don't you obsess over Freiza; you're weaker than both of them. Why Goku? _She could think of several reasons but none of them quite fit.

The saiyan, now completely re-consumed by the ice he wore like a cloak, glared down at her with his dark eyes. Bulma shivered. _You could mistake Goku for human. For a long time, we did. But Vegeta... a second looking at his eyes, and you'd know he wasn't human. He's nothing even remotely human._ "Have fun playing with your useless toys," the saiyan snarled, whirling on the balls on his feet. Ky'ale, sprawled out on the floor, looked up at him with one golden eye and made no move to follow him. "But-" for one moment Vegeta paused, silhouetted in the shadow of the doorway, dark eyes sparkling in the weak light from the lamp- "before you open your mouth next time, remember that I don't fear Kakarotto or anyone else who would protect you. Try and think before you speak."

Ky'ale had put her head back on her talons and the dim glow of her eye had vanished behind the fine tawny fur of her eyelid. Bulma slid from her chair and, on her hands and knees, began feeling around where the radar had fallen for the half-finished construct. When her fingers finally hit the lukewarm metal she wrapped them around it and drew it to her, cradling her injured invention in her arm as she rose to her feet and fell back into her chair. She pushed the departing words of Vegeta out of her mind and inspected the radar for damage, tightening a few tiny screws that had come loose and breathing a sigh of relief when that appeared to be the extent of the damage. Then she stared into the mechanics of the radar and lost herself in her thoughts.

Why Goku? What made Vegeta abhor Goku to such a drastic extent? Was it because Vegeta was the Prince of all Saiyans and here was Goku, the second to last saiyan remaining, making a mockery of their entire race? Was it because of Gohan, half-saiyan and half-human, blurring the purity of his proud race? Was it because Goku wanted to be Vegeta's friend and Vegeta was suspicious, or even- she used to word tentatively, unable to believe the Prince of all Saiyans was capable of such emotion- _scared_ of the idea of caring about anyone but himself?

"He was bluffing, you know." For the second time that night Bulma barely kept herself from stabbing the needle-nosed pliers into her radar. "He's not going to kill you. He wouldn't."

Ky'ale was sitting, looking quite alert indeed, right beside her, staring into her radar. Bulma hated talking to the cat; it was uncomfortable, talking to such an alien face, so feline and seeming so animal, and knowing that not only can the creature behind those golden eyes understand what you say but chances are more than good she'll translate every word back to a homicidal saiyan. Her voice sounded strained and Bulma knew that it couldn't be easy, forcing human speech through a feline mouth, and her eyelids were drooping slightly, the only indication that she'd been sprawled out, half-asleep, not five minutes before.

"I wasn't worried," Bulma answered, and she found the answer surprisingly truthful. Her mind had been full, as it often was since she'd become a scientist like her father, with questions too much to worry or be frightened.

Ky'ale's vertical shoulders rose an inch then relaxed again, implying a shrug. "More fool you, then. Why were you staring at the radar, then, not doing anything to it?"

Bulma hesitated before answering. Ky'ale was only slightly better to talk to than Vegeta, but still, she was someone. "I was thinking."

"About the radar?"

"About Vegeta."

One of Ky'ale's ears perked forward, an expression that reminded Bulma unerringly of Vegeta's expression when one thick eyebrow rose. "Not like that," she corrected herself hastily.

"Like what?" the cat asked, sounding confused, and Bulma reminded herself forcefully that Ky'ale was not human. She didn't have the gutter-mind that Krillin and Yamcha had, that would immediately come to the conclusion that 'thinking about Vegeta' meant 'thinking about sleeping with Vegeta.' And she shuddered to think about it. Vegeta was _not_ human.

"Never mind," she said, blushing. Ky'ale's ear perked further forward. _Oh, lord, now she's sure I'm going to try and seduce the bastard..._ "It's not important."

"Why were you thinking about Vegeta?" Ky'ale's golden eyes bored into the side of Bulma's head. It was impossible to ignore her.

"Not... _him, _exactly." It was going to be hard to explain.

"Then who?"

"Him... and Goku... How he feels about Goku." Once more, the way a human would react to the words made her almost restate them, but Ky'ale only blinked, slowly.

"You know how Vegeta feels about Goku. It's obvious." The derision in Ky'ale's voice made it obvious she thought about nothing but Vegeta's hatred, pure and simple, for the younger saiyan.

"Not so much _how_ he feels about him."

"Then what?"

Bulma hesitated. "What it means," she offered. "Why."

Ky'ale's ears pressed back, and she lifted her shoulders and let them drop again. "Humans," she snorted, in obvious dismissal of the discussion, as she walked back towards the path Vegeta had taken. Bulma didn't know where she thought she was going; Vegeta would have surely closed his door and Ky'ale couldn't work doorknobs with her scaled talons. "You can't just be satisfied with how things are."

Bulma smiled into her radar. "That's what makes us human," she whispered, more to it than to Ky'ale, already out of earshot despite her stronger hearing. Pushing the sharp tips of the pliers back into the mechanism, she contemplated Goku and Vegeta and, with deft motions, twisted the positive and negative wires together.

--

Gohan bent over his History textbook, running his finger over a detailed depiction of the Governmental structure of Feudal Japan. Usually, the feuds of the Daimyos and the iron grip of the Shogun, all fought by and enforced with the romantic Samurai, enchanted him, and he always did well in History until current powers came into play and things turned dull and completely tied to empty figures- _this_ much money and _this_ many miles of land. But he found himself, that afternoon, skipping over lines and forgetting the sentence he had just finished reading. Something was wrong and he felt it as an itch between his shoulder blades, something just barely off axis.

He turned a page in the book without really knowing what was on the preceding print and scanned over a picture of an old Japanese painting depicting a Geisha kneeling among a cluster of flowers, her extravagant dress billowing around her and her face painted a pasty white. He saw a flaw in the painting and was staring at the printed spot depicting woven canvas beneath when the world spun, aimless, groundless, and something that smelled foul rose just out of sight behind him.

In a sense he had barely begun to learn and didn't really understand, he saw a gray-green flash of pulsing light in what, in the sense, might have passed for the corner of his eye. The energy compacted into it made a ball of something bitter lodge in his throat and he couldn't swallow. It was familiar but impossible and the power of it twisted his inside into a writhing knot. _Father!_ a voice within him screamed and the book closed with a snap, jolting him out of whatever state he had been in.

There was no trace that anything had been wrong at all. There was nothing wrong; the earth had returned to its normal orbit and there was ground beneath his knees and he would have expected the whole event to have been a dream if cold sweat wasn't running down his round face, his dark eyes wide. With hands that shook slightly, he opened the book back to the beginning of the chapter and studied every word, throwing himself into the texts and reading so intently he thought his eyes would bleed.


	4. Inebriation

Chapter Four

Inebriation

--

_Why didn't you kill me?_

The words echoed in and out of Vegeta's skull and he felt them bared to the entire world, as if anyone passing by could look up at him and say to themselves, _Kakarotto didn't kill him. He failed but didn't die; he was given mercy by a mentally defective, low-bred saiyan. _Never mind that he closed in his thoughts with shields thicker than even Ky'ale could penetrate easily, despite his habit to simply leave the thoughts themselves to her to read. Somehow, he'd been feeling differently about Ky'ale, of late. Less like she was a part of him and more like she was a being of her own. And never mind that no human aside from Kakarotto's little group of friends knew what a saiyan _was._ His thoughts felt free-form, as if they were created outside of his shielded mind and floated about in the air, shimmering just out of the corner of his eye.

Twin ram-like horns crashed with merciless strength into his back and Vegeta grunted at the painful impact. His train of thought, strange as it was, shattered like glass and fell like rain away from his mind as he turned his focus back to sparring and turned his body back to face the cat, the point of his shoe catching her beneath the chin and one hand reaching out to grab the horn of the thrown-back head. Ky'ale writhed in his grip and her right hind foot caught him in the chest, the claws digging in past the cloth and into his skin and her powerful leg pushing her backwards, flipping her over and letting her land, neatly, on all four feet on the metal floor of the Gravity Room. She was already panting despite that the particular spar had only been going on for forty-five minutes and she'd had a good rest between this one and the much longer one before it. Her eyes had even lost a little of their metallic gold brightness, turning a little more tertiary in the reflecting light of the dome.

Vegeta had wondered, countless times, if she was bothered that she was no longer privy to his thoughts. It shouldn't have mattered to him and of course it really didn't, but of course she never mentioned it if she even noticed. She had spent too long as his bodyguard, never complaining, never opening her mouth unless it was to give advice or answer a question or even just barb him when things got too tense, too depressed. Now, her muzzle was ground shut, her shoulders tense and her hackles raised to her ears, her long neck almost horizontal and bristling. Vegeta waited for her attack, grinning humorlessly, his tight mouth drawn up in a grimace that mocked cheer itself.

_You don't stand a chance,_ he thought to Ky'ale, though the thoughts remained behind his shields and she couldn't hear them at all. She knew, anyway; out of the last few months of sparring she had won only a handful of times and had lost enough to leave her limping at the end of each day. _You're much too slow, little cat. _"Aren't you supposed to be fast enough to protect me?"

Then Ky'ale was no longer standing there at all but fire-hot talons were raking down his back. Vegeta, with a very soft cry of both pain and shock, pulled away, dripping blood onto the metal floor. The kairn hovered behind him, and was gone when a beam of yellow-gold light shot where she had floated.

"I am," said a voice beneath him. Vegeta moved. Red-orange light sparked where he had been. _That's more like it!_ he crowed inside his mind, keeping himself moving through the air. If he stopped she'd attack him. She, too, moved constantly, reminding him absurdly like a swimming snake in her weaving motions. The lips had been drawn away from her teeth, and her eyes glowed again with pure golden light. _Much better!_ It took very little in the way of jibes to stir Ky'ale to motion.

The door suddenly opened and the white sunlight came in to chase out the shadows of the Gravity Room. With her eyes suddenly a fire-gold blaze, Ky'ale lifted her hackles higher, and faster than Vegeta could see, flipped over, diving at the open square of light.

Kakarotto, with the deft motions of someone tossed a football, reached out one hand faster than Vegeta could see and wrapped the fingers around Ky'ale's horn. She yelped and her body came crashing forward, her hind paws digging long claws into Kakarotto's chest. He almost cursed, dropped his handhold, and drew back into the light. Ky'ale, perched on the edge between the still shadowy Gravity Room and the square of sunlight cast on the metal floor, let her snarl fade to a growl and relaxed her tense posture. Vegeta, shoulders squared and brows drawn down to a point, slowly floated to the floor.

"Nice, Ky'ale!" Goku complimented, standing smiling in the square of light. It refracted from the metal and glittered around him. The younger saiyan looked disorientingly like he was glowing. "I've never _seen_ someone move that fast!"

Vegeta, remembering the way Kakarotto's hand had shot out to stop her, could no longer say that. He kept his mouth shut, lips sealed, eyes completely dead.

Ky'ale spoke for him. "What are you doing here, Kakarotto?" But her voice held the exasperated tones of a sigh and no longer spoke with the venom she once would have spat for the honor of her Prince. Vegeta's shoulders got a little more tense.

"Goku," the younger saiyan corrected automatically. Two pairs of stony eyes silently stared back at him, cold black and glowing gold. Realizing they weren't going to correct themselves, Kakarotto gave a philosophical, minimalistic shrug and grinned. "Piccolo's tired and Chichi won't let Gohan train. I came to see if you wanted to spar, Vegeta?"

A firestorm was gathering behind the ice. _Why didn't you kill me?_ he thought pointedly at Kakarotto, but with the shields the younger saiyan couldn't hear him. _Why didn't you kill me? Why did you let me live?_ It wasn't to get an advantage, any kind of advantage, and it wasn't to humiliate him. Then why? "We're fine, Kakarotto."

Goku's shoulders slumped slightly. "Are you sure, Vegeta?" he asked. "I guess I could spar with Tien, but he lives a long way from here, and I don't think Krillin's been really keeping up with working out."

_Why didn't you kill me?_ Vegeta glared at him, silently, searching through and into his rival, trying to see if the reasons behind his charity lurked in some hidden corner of his face. _Why didn't you stop me? Why did you let me live?_

That was when Kakarotto changed the angle of his face and, by accident or intent, the two pairs of black eyes met, one reflecting sunlight that made them almost glimmer and one darkened by the shadows and the thoughts behind them, ice, their glare frozen, frigid. Vegeta forgot how to breathe as the answers came to him, as if sent from the mind behind the other set of eyes. _Why didn't you kill me?_ I didn't want for you to die; not then, not like that. Not choking on your pride, choking on yourself.

He couldn't move, caught in between fire and the ice he surrounded himself with, trapped in the contact. He couldn't think. He fell into the depths and had to claw his way out. _I didn't want you to die like that..._ The eyes seemed to speak for themselves. Vegeta, never good at reading facial expressions, could almost hear the words in his mind, an echo to the eye contact. _Not like that._

And there were more reasons than that, but Vegeta broke contact, drawing deeper into his dome, the moment he was able to move. Goku watched him, a little confused, wondering what he had seen just a second ago. Just a second ago, when the ice in Vegeta's eyes had vanished and there was a look in the black depths the younger saiyan could not interpret. Vegeta, he noticed, had been the first to look away, which was significant but he didn't know how.

_Some hearts never change._

_Anyone can change, Chichi._

_Not people like him. He's poisoned, you can see it in his eyes, in the way he moves, the way he talks. He's been poisoned, and he'll never get better._

_I know him, Chichi. He can change. I've seen it myself. Gohan would be dead if it weren't for him._

_We'd have wished him back._

_That's not the point._

"Kakarotto." The voice was deep and ice-cold but it trembled just slightly to Goku's ears and he wondered again what he had seen that he couldn't figure out. Ky'ale heard the flaw in his voice and she looked back at her Prince, then forward at Kakarotto, then back again, unaware of what had taken place right above her head, almost between her horns. "We're fine. Go away."

The words broke the crystal that had settled over them all, freezing Goku and Vegeta and confusing Ky'ale. Goku grinned and said only, "Suit yourself," but it meant more than that to him and he suspected it meant more than that to Vegeta. Then he withdrew into the full sunlight and closed the door behind him, locking in the shadows that Vegeta blinked rapidly out of his eyes.

When he could see again by the dim lights in the dome, he studied his hands for a full thirty seconds. Ky'ale studied him, her head tilted slightly to one side.

_Why didn't you kill me?_

_I wanted you to live, Vegeta. I didn't want for you to die like that._

_Why? Why do you care, Kakarotto? What do you want from me? Why didn't you kill me, why didn't you stop me when you had the chance?_

_Vegeta, I didn't want to hurt you._

_Why?_ Anger held back barely grew inside of him, swelled with the words that echoed in the prince's head. He didn't know why, but the anger grew and pointed itself like a weapon at Goku's bleeding heart._ God damn you, Kakarotto, why did you let me live?_

_Vegeta, it was because I-_

_Go away._

_Suit yourself._

It didn't matter that only the last part of the conversation had actually happened. The imprint of Kakarotto's eyes still lingered, burned into Vegeta's retinas, and his heart, that had been lodged in his throat since the lower-born saiyan had changed the angle of his face and their eyes had been locked onto one another, slowly began lowering itself back into his chest and beating again. Vegeta noted it with a strange, detached sensation, realizing for the first time in years that he did, indeed, still have a heart. This made him uncomfortable, and he wasn't certain why.

_What do you want from me?_

_Vegeta, I didn't want to hurt you._

It didn't matter that it hadn't happened. Vegeta obsessed over the unspoken words.

Then golden light shot through the air and Vegeta abandoned the uncomfortable thoughts, throwing himself into the spar with Ky'ale.

--

Goku walked slowly away from the dome, staring intently at the struggling patches of grass trying to grow in the gray dirt. A gust of wind carried clouds of dust and distantly, the saiyan wondered if it was going to rain that week or if the drought would go on. Thoughts on weather were safe but Goku was never the one to avoid his own thoughts when he didn't like them.

For the first time, he wondered. _Why _didn't_ I kill him?_ It wasn't only that he always gave people second chances. After all, he'd killed Raditz- who was, after all, his _brother-_ without bothering to give him a second chance, and Vegeta had seemed, if anything, worse than Raditz. He had killed Nappa. He had almost killed Ky'ale. Why, then, had he stopped Krillin from killing Vegeta?

He knew the answer and that bothered him. He knew it because he had seen it in Vegeta's eyes, ice-cold eyes the reflected the square of light that Goku had stood in, the square of light that was let into the shadowed dome by the open door, a shaft of sunlight that had enveloped Goku and left Vegeta and Ky'ale in the dark. His own eyes, he knew, reflected nothing of the inside of the Gravity Room. But the angle of the light had been such that he had seen his reflection, for one heart stopping moment, in Vegeta's eyes.

He had not seen a human.

He looked up at the sky but for once the endless blue and the sphere of fire gave him no easy answers. _Why didn't I kill him?_ It was a simple question but it held no simple answers. _God, Vegeta, haven't you figured it out, yet? Didn't you realize when we fought for the first time, before Gohan transformed and we were almost equally matched? Didn't you realize it then?_

_I am a human._

He was a saiyan.

The earth was his home but he'd only found it after leaving another planet. A place where he was born, where he might have had family and friends and found a life that wasn't this one. Where he would have been Kakarotto, and he would have been ruthless and intelligent and fierce and short-tempered. Where he would have fought without trepidation for people who paid him. He ran a nervous hand through his hair. _I didn't live that life. I'm here, I'm surrounded by humans I think of as my friends, my family. _But he was still a saiyan. At the core, he was still from a race of warriors, and he felt it in that shifting core every time he fought.

_Some hearts never change._

_You will never understand, Chichi. You can't._

_Why didn't you kill me?_

He stared at the sky, stared at the sun. His breath shook slightly as he let it out. _Don't you realize, Vegeta? I didn't kill you because I thought you'd understand. I thought you'd know what it's like, I thought you'd know, you'd sympathize, you'd see through me. But you don't, you see things only as you want to see them and to you there's no middle ground. I'm human, or I'm a saiyan. _Vegeta didn't understand.

Or maybe he did, he understood too well. Maybe that shook Goku; how could he know? He'd never been understood before. With a sigh, Goku stared at the sky and walked, almost aimlessly, towards his home.

----

His name was Tortoise, and he was a turtle. Turtles lived to be hundreds of years old and he himself was barely fifty, which was young compared to some of his species, but one seeing him for the first time would think him quite ancient. For one thing, there was the company he kept. They didn't get much older than Master Roshi. For another, there was the way he spoke, the way he moved, even down to the way he moved his head and eyes. Everything about him was slow, deliberate. Never mind that this was characteristic of his species. And the last was that he tended to be-

"The most insufferably lazy creature on the planet earth." Tortoise shifted and slowly turned his head to blink brown eyes at Master Roshi. The responding glare was somewhat lessened by the dark sunglasses that perpetually covered Roshi's eyes. "Good for nothing, you know. I don't know why I keep you around anymore."

"That," Tortoise replied, his words drawn out, "is hardly fair." Here he paused and beat one flipper slowly down onto the beach for emphasis. A small disturbance in sand covered a portion of the fin with gritty gold. "Like you're keeping up with the boys in training. Or really doing anything with your time. Aside from looking at those magazines." Slowly pronounced or not, the tone behind 'magazines' eloquently showed Tortoise's feelings about them. Nasty creatures, humans. Not that he didn't like watching a female turtle migrate or climb determinedly up a beach as much as the next reptile, but still, he liked girls his _age._ At the very least, his decade. Or, you know, out of the 'statutory rape' range.

"All I asked," Roshi protested, sounding defensive, "was for you to catch one little fish. Just one."

Tortoise snorted eloquently. "I already did," he drawled.

"For yourself!"

Tortoise beat one flipper onto the beach. After forty years in his company, Roshi had long since interpreted that as a shrug.

"Stupid, lazy, offensive animal. I should have...."

Whatever Roshi was going to say was cut off by the door to his hut slamming closed. The old man shot to a sitting up position, his eyes wide behind his sunglasses. Krillin didn't seem to notice. He was meandering towards the beach, one of the aforementioned magazines held in his right hand and a soda held in his left, the cover folded back over the magazine and his eyes trained, fixatedly, on the picture.

Tortoise chuckled into his flipper at the look on Roshi's face. And, for that matter, the look on Krillin's face. The younger man had been pretty much an invalid since his girlfriend had thrown him out and, unable to think of anywhere else to go and without the will to continue training, he had come to his old Master's home. Roshi hadn't been thrilled. Krillin hadn't been helpful. They had, Tortoise decided, quite deserved each other.

"Roshi," Krillin said, without lifting his eyes from the page but flipping the page with his thumb, "I found a huge stack of these hidden in your room."

"What- what were you doing in there?" the older man stammered, and Tortoise had to all but bury his beak in the sand to keep from laughing aloud. "Will you give me that?"

Krillin absently pulled his hand back from Roshi's snatching fingers. It had been months since the younger man had last trained but he had lost little of his reflexes. "Are all of these things _legal_? he asked, sounding somewhere between curious and revolted. "Some of these- girls- don't look quite eighteen..."

"They're all..." Roshi's words were, not for the first time, cut off. The half-embarrassed, half-furious looked dissolved from his face. Krillin's expression looked likewise blank, suddenly, the emotion melting off of his features. Tortoise looked from one to the other, trying to divinate what was happening between them.

Krillin lost his connection to the earth. He was being propelled through space, propelled through time. He couldn't grab hold of anything. He couldn't see. Couldn't breathe. Cold fire raced through his veins and it all felt familiar, coldly, heart stoppingly familiar. Dark and powerful and throbbing in a harsh, sharp tattoo, it ran from one ear to the next and forced itself down his throat, forced itself into his mind and heart like black needles. Pulsing gray-green light. A disturbingly familiar smell, familiar power that coursed through his body.

Then the moment had passed and he felt the wind on his face and the beach beneath bare feet and had the most absurd notion that he had traveled back in time, and he was young and stupid and headstrong, and he had one opportunity to go back and remove himself entirely from the chance to study under Master Roshi and become tied up in the battles and fights and problems that seemed to perpetually revolve around Goku. He hadn't trained in weeks; the friendly rivalry between himself and Goku had dissolved years back when Goku pulled ahead by far and the world no longer seemed to depend on his human friend. He had slowly decreased the hours spent working out until he had stopped altogether and merely watched, from a distance, the two rival powers that were Goku and Vegeta slowly increase and narrow and broaden the gap between them. He knew it was stupid, that he had left the world of normal people far behind and he really had little life when he stopped fighting. He didn't have a family like Goku. He didn't have an obsession like Vegeta. He didn't have a life-long dedication like Ky'ale or an old life to lean back on like Yamcha or even a turtle, like Master Roshi. All of this settled on his mind like disturbed dust settles on a surface while two thoughts chased each other around his head- the blind staggering towards the comfort of 'that's impossible' and the uneasy realization of just how possible what he had just felt was. His stomach turned. He was no where near strong enough to fight that. He never had been and his lapse had just increased the difference. But he was already tied into the fighting and there was no chance to go back in time to get away.

"I have to go back to Goku," he told Master Roshi. He couldn't see the eyes behind the sunglasses but he knew by the deeper lines around the old man's mouth that he had felt the same thing the fighter had just felt. The magazine, it's graphic picture open to the world around them, lay forgotten on the sand.

"Good luck, Krillin." Master Roshi inclined his head, then leaned back against his chair.

Krillin knew, very well, just how much he needed that luck. He could even now feel remembered pain, cutting through his body like a taloned hand, ripping him into two, the blood splashing onto the green-gray earth of Namic. But he squared his shoulders and denied the cowardice that clawed at his stomach. "Hopefully, I won't need it," he replied. "Hopefully, your training will be enough."

And then he was gone and Tortoise was watching him fly through the air, brown eyes wide. He still didn't know what had happened. For a long minute, he thought Roshi was asleep, but then he saw the old human shift. His thick white eyebrows were drawn to a point right above the bridge of his nose. Tortoise had seen him like this before and remained silent while Roshi traced unseen powers across the sky. His face seemed more weathered, more worn, older; Tortoise saw the despair on the human's face and felt his spine, fused as it was to his shell, tremble.

"Let's hope," Roshi replied to the long-gone Krillin in a whisper Tortoise barely heard; a whisper that had very little hope left.

------

End Note: A little like an author's note, but at the end so you think I'm going to be quiet until you get down here. I don't really have much to say except I'm sorry for the randomness of the end... Yeah.

Review! Oh dear _god_ please review! I love hearing from you and I really appreciate the reviews I've gotten! I'm sorry that I haven't had the time to go poke you three's stories yet, but I will.


	5. Like Clockwork

Chapter Five

Like Clockwork

Last chapter of Part One. Have to love a cliffhanger ending. Sorry it's not as long as usual; the AN's make up for most of the chapter lengths.

Bad website! Show my asteriks!

--

Goku sat up in his bed and stared into darkness. Beside him, Chichi stirred slightly and he put a hand on her shoulder. It felt thin and frail, and it disturbed him that he was very well aware how easily it could be broken. How easily _she_ could be broken. He remembered Vegeta telling him that was true of all humans and wondered why it had never bothered him before. How easily Krillin had fallen to Frieza, and Yamcha and Tien to Vegeta and Nappa- even if, technically, Tien was something other than human. How quickly Roshi had deteriorated to something less than any of them. He remembered the words _Fountain of Life_ that kept Roshi alive and well even in his _extremely_ old age, and willed his hand not to tighten around Chichi's shoulder.

And Tien, Yamcha, Krillin- they were the best of the best, among humans. He hardly knew _any_ humans that weren't warriors, and barely knew any fighters that weren't those three. Even Bulma, in a strange sense, could be considered a warrior, at least according to Vegeta's spiel, which had excused scientists because they _did_ fight a battle of their own, if against an intangible enemy. Goku didn't get that but supposed it must have been true.

_And what about Chichi?_ he'd asked. _What about my wife?_

Vegeta had raised one thick eyebrow at that. _What about her? She is not a warrior, she's a human; she will live and die without meaning like the rest of them._

_She has meaning to me! _Even then, he'd wondered if he was defending Chichi or his feeling for her; trying to convince Vegeta or himself.

_Congratulations._

Goku ran one finger down his wife's lax arm. In her sleep, her lips curled up into a smile. The thoughts of human weakness had not been what woke Goku, nor had uncomfortable thoughts involving his wife. But instead was a strange feeling, almost a sickness in his stomach, and the distinct feel of something _very_ strong coming towards earth. Coming very close to earth. It was not unfamiliar.

And the thought of what that power could do to his friends had started him on a course of thought that was seeming, upon reflection, more and more decisively saiyan.

He rose, very carefully, from his bed, rolling over and pulling on a shirt and a pair of pants, not really caring whether they were clean or dirty or what they looked like. Very quietly, as to not wake Chichi, he slipped from his room, shut the door, and came face-to-face with two sleeping forms and seven orange spheres glittering in the subtle moonlight flowing from an open window.

Seven _large_ orange spheres. Porunga's Dragonballs, then, which would make sense because they had summoned Porunga first in the first place. He took a step closer, then a step back and flicked on the light. The bald human on the couch and the young Namic sat up immediately, eyes wide, then settled when they saw him.

"It's been a year, now?" he asked, looking askance of Krillin.

Dende nodded. Krillin said, "Yeah. I found Dende and we gathered them last night. Tonight, I guess- what time is it? Anyway, I figured we'd protect them."

"You felt it, too?"

A silent nod. Dende stared at the ground.

"Goku, is it-"

"I don't know."

"I hope not."

"Me, too."

----

Yamcha's eyes were wide open; the power he felt churned in his stomach as he swung out of bed and pulled on the light clothing he wore, whistling for Puar. The floating feline shape-shifter clung to his shoulder, looking at the serious, scarred face of her friend.

The moonlight bounced off thin, clear whiskers and glittering, dark blue fur. "Yamcha? Is something wrong?" Her voice was a terrified squeak.

"Yeah," was Yamcha's only response as he left the home he had made of a very small house and bolted into the dry air of the desert night. He scanned the horizon but no star moved strangely in the sky, no ship to bear the revolting power that lurked inside his mind. Not yet, at least.

Eyes narrowed as he glowered at the heavens, Yamcha jumped into the air and flew towards Capsule Corp, Goku's home, and the friends that would need him.

------

Piccolo slept leaning against the stone wall of the mountain and fully dressed in the night air. But his dreams took a plummeting turn as something disgusting writhed within him and he woke in seconds, eyes wide and pupils shrunken and staring in horror up at the night sky. The stars were in midnight patterns, and the air was almost cold through the layers of cloth and the Namic stoic nature, and that was enough to give Piccolo the time. Goku would be awake, though, as would all of his other friends- and allies, he amended, remembering Vegeta and Ky'ale- and gathering to determine what it was that drew in all that power.

Shuddering, he stood, and threw himself off the edge of the mountain to fly to where Goku lived.

--------

It promised to be a re-enactment of an earlier encounter. Bored, Ky'ale put her head down on her talons and merely watched as Vegeta and Bulma all but dueled right there in Bulma's kitchen.

"Listen to me, you god forsaken blue-haired harpy," the saiyan snarled, "the Dragonballs are coming back tonight, and the last time I checked the radar belonged to you. I want it. I helped you and your pathetic little friends back on Namic and now I demand retribution!"

Bulma's eyes were spheres of blue fire. "The last time _I_ checked, Vegeta, Chen Ron's Dragonballs were used to bring _you_ back to life, as well, so don't go about saying that you haven't been repaid. And the last time _I_ checked, I still needed to_ fix_ the radar, which _someone_ broke because _someone_ had a fit of pique and never learned to control his temper!"

"And yet you never _did_ fix that radar because you've been working on some stupid power scan that _no one bloody needs!_"

Tail twitching, Ky'ale yawned. They could go on like this for hours. Luckily, however, Vegeta had put off training that day and tonight he was more than likely to be more inclined to pummel Ky'ale into a bleeding mass of bruises than to verbally flay Bulma. Maybe only slightly, but there you had it. And the kairn was more disposed to be pummeled into said mass than sit around and listen to the saiyan and the human fight. Again. And any second now, there would be _more_ fire because Bulma, like clockwork, would bring up Goku...

"It's not my problem that you need a Dragon to help you be more powerful than Goku!"

Like clockwork.

"I do _not_ need the help of a Dragon! I am taking the more god-damn convenient way, but I by no means need anyone's help!" Even though he did.

"You do, Vegeta! You need Porunga's help and you need my help to get his help and I'm tired of listening to you bitch and complain and I'm tired of doing what you tell me to! I'm not going to take that any more!" Even though she would.

"Yes, you will," Vegeta said, his eyes narrowing dangerously.

"Because you're tired of being underneath in power of a saiyan of lower birth than you who still knows how to give a shit about someone aside from himself?"

"Because I'm tired of being weaker than anyone!" The words were all but screamed at her. "Because I will not rest until I am the most powerful being in the universe!"

Bulma's blue eyes burned a hole through Vegeta's skull. "You're scared of him, aren't you? You aren't used to someone caring about you, caring about whether you live or die."

Vegeta's voice and eyes and entire form screamed about the frozen labyrinth of his heart. "I don't need anyone."

"And to whom are you trying to prove that by becoming immortal? Me? Goku?" It was taunting, now; taunting was usually the last stage of fighting before Vegeta became so furious he could barely retain from slapping her across the face. That was when they usually left. Ky'ale noted a trembling in Vegeta's right hand and nodded.

"The gods," the saiyan snarled in response, whirling and beckoning his bodyguard-slash-sparring partner. "I will prove it to the gods as I join their ranks."

"Poetic, Vegeta," Bulma sneered at his retreating back. The saiyan ignored her.

In the flourescent lights of the Gravity Room Ky'ale was beaten into the black-and-blue under gold mass of bleeding bruises she was promised, and the abuse had gone on for almost forty-five minutes before the world turned upside down again and this time, Ky'ale knew Vegeta felt it, too. The immense power rose like bitter bile in her stomach and throat and she choked on it. Gray-green it invaded her mind, permeated her senses, rendered her blind and deaf and dumb to the world around her, the world that was anything but her and the sickening, pulsing power.

It was headed straight for them. Not only for earth, but for Capsule Corp. The fur along Ky'ale's spine rose and she met Vegeta's wide black eyes. She knew he had but the question had to be asked, had to be voiced. "Did you feel that?"

Mutely, Vegeta nodded.

"We should get out of here."

Mutely, Vegeta nodded.

Ky'ale leapt for the door and almost plowed through it, Vegeta reaching it just moments before she and wrenching it open, both of them fleeing without even bothering to turn off the machines. Vegeta was no longer mute but was snarling a string of curses under his breath and Ky'ale didn't blame him in the least. Moreover and most likely more significant, his thoughts, which until that moment had been blocked off from the kairn, held an overpowering undercurrent of fear. Ky'ale had never seen- or, really, felt- Vegeta afraid but she supposed that death had done it. And now, mocking his death, mocking him, mocking his fervent attempts to destroy the rivalry between himself and the one who had watched him die and had bothered to bury him- even if, when he returned to life, that was a little less than a blessing- was the bloody bastard who had killed him.

Ky'ale snarled as she flew into the night.

----------

Bulma yawned, the screwdriver's point driving into the back of the Dragonball radar. She hated listening to Vegeta, but the work on the power radar _had_ gotten a little tedious, and she _had_ accomplished enough that it functioned the basic workings of its predecessor fairly well. While not looking as completely hideous, she thought with a twinge of pride. Looking down at its _two_ glass screens- one for _each_ eye- she could see the dual powers of Ky'ale- she wasn't looking so good, Vegeta must be taking his temper out on her- and the saiyan prince fighting. She lifted the invention and smiled, turning it so that she could see Goku, Yamcha, Tien, Piccolo. Her brows furrowed and a little frown played across her face. _What are they all doing at Goku's house?_ And there was Gohan- granted, an expected presence- and Krillin, who was less than expected. Bulma shrugged and put the power radar down. She had another job to do; the boys' card night wasn't any of her business, anyway.

She yawned again and blinked sleep out of her eyes, reaching over and grabbing the cup of coffee and frowning as the last brown drop slid down the white, rounded surface and dripped, lukewarm, onto her tongue. She was exhausted. She frowned at the digital clock beside her lamp- the glowing red letters said that it was 12:28- and put the mug down with a sniff. She had no business getting this tired before three in the morning. She was still _young_, after all, practically still a teenager. Overworked, sure, but still _young._

She picked up the screwdriver, looked at the Dragonball radar, and put it down again. Screw Vegeta. He had thought she wouldn't be able to figure out his continued obsession with immortality, hadn't he? A smile curved across her face; okay, Vegeta was annoying, but it was still... cute. Maybe not cute. It was still nice and she liked to see that even the Prince of all Saiyans could find himself inevitably in love. (If he ever chose to find himself at all; knowing Vegeta.) And, with Goku. And, as a result, tied in knots about himself, and about his rivalry, and about his strength. And, if he could admit, even to himself, that he felt that way, he'd be tied in knots about his... well, his masculinity, was the best way to word it. Bulma had seen it before.

Bulma sighed and rubbed her eyes. _And poor Vegeta can't stand the thought that maybe, just maybe, Goku cares about him, as well._ Maybe, innocent, naive Goku- innocent, naive, _married_ Goku- cared about him a little more than he cared about the rest of his battle-buddies.

And that was where the ice got a little thin and Bulma removed herself from the whole issue. She wasn't about to be the one- or near the one- to tell Chichi about any of this. _As a matter of fact, I believe I'd prefer to be in another country at the time. Italy, perhaps. _

That was, _if _anything became of it. Which seemed unlikely. Vegeta looked ready to simply keep denying it and convincing himself that he hated Goku and Goku seemed perfectly willing to deny it as well and tell himself he loved Chichi. And if that was the way they were happy, hell knew Bulma wasn't about to break their neat little world of self-delusion. If their views of themselves were seen really more out of a funhouse mirror that true self-reflection, what grounds did she have of breaking them of that?

A whirring sound caught Bulma's attention, and she stared for a moment at the Dragonball radar, wondering what exactly she had done to it, before she realized it wasn't the Dragonball radar, but the power radar that was making the sound. A bit of electricity arched from one copper wire to the next, and it whirred again, then made a strange set of clicking sounds. Bulma's eyebrows furrowed. It sounded like... she'd heard the sound before.

Carefully, she reached out and touched it, then cursed when the power shocked her. Frowning, she picked up her needle-nosed pliers and used the rubber-covered handles to inch the sparking thing towards her. She managed to pick it up by the glass screens- screw that she'd have to clean off the fingerprints later- and picked up the glasses, frowning at the screen. There was a number in the corner even though it was pointed towards the back end of the basement and not towards Vegeta and Ky'ale or the group in Goku's home. Carefully, she turned it- there was Goku's number, there was Krillin's, Piccolo's, Yamcha's, Tien's, Gohan's, then one by one they reduced and disappeared as she turned it to pick up Vegeta's and Ky'ale's. The first number gathered swiftly, constantly rising- already it was much more than Vegeta's, a little more than Goku's, and steadily, steadily increasing.

Some sort of intuition urged her to point it up- and it skyrocketed as she found its source in the sky. Her breath caught in her throat as she remembered when she had last seen a number this high. With a gasp of remembrance, she threw the power radar away from her and it sizzled, popped, and combusted in midair before falling to the ground as a wreck.

She didn't have time or room in her mind to feel disappointment at the loss of something she'd spent so much time on. Her throat and her heart had squeezed in fear until she thought she must look like some strange creature with a normal head and then a narrow tube until her abdomen. Her breathing was ragged if it was there at all. She either mouthed, or whispered, or said or screamed "Frieza" into the vacant workshop.

And then Capsule Corp exploded.

end Part One

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End Note: Hah! You thought I was going to be quiet!

I sulk because I hate hyphens and I want to use asteriks like I always do, but website won't let them be seen. Nor, oddly enough, will it show its own URL. o0... Bad.

Mrr. I'm pretty sure Tortoise's name in interchangable. They never really set up a solid personality for him, but he suited my needs so I did it for them. Call it artistic liciense. Oh, and in response to the same person, second part of their comment: the great thing about DBZ is, it doesn't really matter what happens to the characters! You can bring them back to life! Problem solving, DBZ style: kill everyone and bring them back and kill them again and bring them back until everything's alright again! Throw in 18 and Trunks for any girls who managed to make it this far- just in case they get bored and start writing yaoi fanfics- and some explosions for the pyros. So I'm not going to give any spoilers until I say that at least one of them, excluding those who just now died, is going down.

I love everyone who reviewed; I really, really do. It really does make one happier to realize that even though they wasted an hour and a half of their lives on that chapter, it's not a complete and total waste of time! Please, those of you who're reading this, please review on it, just for me? sadpuppydogeyes?

That's the end of Part One! See you in Part Two!


	6. Overkill

Part Two

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And this is incredible

Starving insatiable

Yes this is love for first time

Well you liked to think that you were invincible

Yeah weren't we all once

Before we felt lost for the first time

This is the last time

This is the last time

This is the last time....

--Dashboard Confessional, "Brilliant Dance"

A/N: Yay! Welcome to Part Two, everyone! Sorry this took so long, I re-read Part Two and realized I didn't like it so much as I did when I was writing it- everything happened so suddenly in like, the second and third chapters and I wanted to sort of drag it across the entire part. Sort of like... you know how when an insect hits a windsheild and sort of skeewwwwssss... Okay. I'm rambling. I reply to/ appologize to Mkh2 at the end of the chapter... ()

Chapter One

Overkill

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Ky'ale panted, feeling deep wounds leak blood, her head lolling on its side in front of her. She felt as though it no longer had any connection to her body, which felt itself as though there was no more earth and no more sky and only emptiness all around. Of course, the advanced ships Frieza had landed in did not go into freefall, so there was still a comfortable amount of gravity keeping her pinned to the floor, for which she was grateful; she didn't think she would be able to survive bouncing off the walls right then. Vegeta, beside her, breathed raggedly and she could smell his blood and his pain and it burned her nostrils. She didn't have energy to expend in pity or worry, but if she did it would readily be spent for the saiyan prince. Goku's pained moan reached her ears as though from a million miles away. He curled over his own knees, and she could see that while he was certainly in physical agony enough, most of his pain was not from his beaten body as her own and Vegeta's- who leaned against the metal wall with an expression between pain and fury- were.

The rest of them- the rest of earth- were only more fragments of dust floating around space. Ky'ale closed her eyes as a lance of pain shot from temple to temple in remembrance of the collective scream of the entire human world. In remembrance of the quieter but just as final shrieks of, one by one, the earth's defense. The people she was beginning to form weak, tentative, pathetic friendships with. Her golden-pupiled eyes opened, then closed again, shutting out the flourescent lights and endless space and pain-stricken saiyans to either side of her stretched-out form.

The first to die had been Gohan. No, that wasn't right; the first to die had been Bulma and her family, and her pets, and her inventions; she remembered flying beside Vegeta, racing for Goku's home, when the explosion had occurred. She remembered the scent of Frieza- the damned gecko was hovering outside of his spaceship, one glowing finger still extended- the scent of burning, the scents of death and pain and horrible, choking, restricting fear. She saw Frieza's face and felt the heavy burden of his power and knew that if he turned he could catch both of them and kill them before either could blink. But Frieza could not sense power and his power radar was overwhelmed with the release of energy that was the massive pyre he had just created and the finer technology in his ship was manned currently by creatures with less brainpower than a can of condensed soup. Gohan had been next, right as Ky'ale and Vegeta arrived at Goku's house and the adult fighters were just emerging and the painfully fast Frieza was hovering over the tiny home, his finger again extended. There was his father, the damn purple lizard King Kold, that smelt like rotting flesh, and then that smell was overpowered by again the mingled scents of burning and fear, and Gohan and Chichi died in a blaze of energy and fire.

Goku had screamed, and scream of primal anger that still echoed in Ky'ale's ears. Vegeta's eyes had become narrow stripes of black and white in his anger-crumpled face. And the kairn herself; her hackles were up to the tips of her horns, her lips risen to bare her sharp teeth.

It was seven to two. It was slaughter. Krillin was the next to die, torn from the air by an almost carefree motion while Frieza was assaulted by Goku. The young saiyan was powerful and his anger had risen his strength, but it was obvious that the gray-green emperor was still only playing with him. Ky'ale could not forget the look on Goku's face, torn between impossible grief and fury that he would not be able to pay Frieza for Gohan's death. The next after Krillin to fall was Yamcha, Kold's energy attack wiping out what little strength he had left. Puar had died in the explosion that killed Gohan. He landed in the ash and rubble that she lay in.

Ky'ale's eyes had followed him and she caught sight of eight forms in the rubble- seven large, orange spheres and Dende, kneeling among them and staring at the battle with his eyes wide, transfixed on the slaughter. The kairn's flanks were already striped with blood. The training with Vegeta had covered her form with bruises; the battling with Kold and Frieza had broken the skin and the bone beneath, and changed her proud stature into something pathetic and limp. But she knew what those eight figures meant and she dropped at once to the earth to defend them. Tien dropped to the earth right after her, tried to sit up, gasped once, and ceased moving.

Not once did she worry about why Dende was there. Never once did she wonder why the Dragonballs were already gathered, or how the Namic child had survived the explosion that had killed Gohan and Chichi. She only stood as tall she could between her enemies and the Dragonballs, snarled with what pride she could scrounge from her torn mind, and shrieked telepathically at Dende- _"Get out of here, kid! Get the fuck out, we can't let them catch you!"_ If Dende was gone, Frieza couldn't use the Dragonballs. Nothing else mattered, except perhaps Vegeta not being hurt. Dende rose, then leapt into the air, and flew for all he was worth. Kold tried to follow him. Vegeta's foot slammed into the damned beast's back with the satisfying crack of bone shattering. The King's eyes grew wide, and the Prince's other foot followed through, slamming into Kold's throat. The next death. There were four fighters remaining. (Where was Piccolo? Ky'ale hadn't seen him fall but she saw him lying still and suddenly felt vague, disconnected, almost fuzzy, less from grief than from shock, than from the sudden realization that the fight was occurring all around her and she couldn't see and she could only grind down and focus on protecting the Dragonballs.) Vegeta's left arm hung down, useless, and Goku looked about as scratched and beaten as a man could get, and Frieza looked unscathed, but there were still three of them and only one of him. There was hope. Negligible, but there was hope.

Then that hope died as the two ships Frieza had come in came crashing to earth, and their crews rushed out. Weak beings that were barely warriors, that even Ky'ale in her worn condition could kill on a one-on-one fight or maybe even, like this, a three-on-one fight, but not in twelve-on-one and with Frieza to boot. And they weren't after Ky'ale, or Vegeta or Goku; four spirited after Dende while the rest, some thirty-odd creatures, swarmed for the Dragonballs. Ky'ale fought them with all she had, Vegeta shaking off the few that attacked him, Goku's sights completely filled with Frieza.

What happened next she didn't really know. It was a blur of her own screams and pain. And blood, her own and not her own and heavy on her fur, and then she was on her side, breathing heavily, clinging to consciousness, and they- they being the creatures that had swarmed for the Dragonballs and now numbered around twelve, she remembered with the remains of a fierce grin- had Dende and the Dragonballs and were running again for their ships.

"Take the first," Frieza called to them, and Ky'ale remembered vaguely realizing he meant the first ship, which meant to leave the second, and she had wondered vaguely why. Of course, it would occur to her later that the larger ship, the first, might very well have _needed_ twelve people to crew it. Bigger ships were more maintenance, and breaking down in space was never a good idea. And then it was Frieza, powerful, great, soon-to-be-immortal Frieza who faced them, the pathetic, battered, bleeding, bruised, barely breathing three of them, and he carefully, almost cheerfully laughed. Goku, the closest to him, narrowed his eyes even further than they were already narrowed.

"Kakarotto," he purred, "how I've always wanted to kill you since you left me to almost die on Namic. What a horrible mistake." Another laugh. "You know, I'm more powerful, now; they repaired my body with metal and increased my strength. I truly owe you. I believe I owe you a swift and painless death." His grin was cool and malicious. Ky'ale, lying on her side and waiting for her own death, waiting with baited breath, felt bile rising weakly to her throat at the expression and didn't have the energy to swallow it back down. "But wouldn't that be so... out of character?"

Slowly, the cyborg gecko lowered himself to the earth. Goku tried one more attack and was thrown to the dirt in one move. Vegeta threw himself at Frieza. The lizard stepped neatly out of the way. "You, Kakarotto, will watch the earth fall and everyone you have come to love die before your own death." He moved his hand quickly and said as white light arced from his fingertips, "Vegeta, I don't give a damn how you die." The energy hit Vegeta's chest and he was thrown down into the dust. "But Ky'ale, you got to watch it. Aren't you lucky?"

_He's not dead,_ she'd thought, knowing it as well as she knew she herself lived. Better, in fact. _He's still alive. Don't let him know. Oh, gods, Vegeta, don't move._ But Vegeta didn't seem capable of moving. Goku moaned weakly and the moan sounded almost like Vegeta's name. Frieza laughed and walked towards his ship.

"No!" Ky'ale noticed with detached interest that the voice was her own. Feeling every inch of bone and skin scream in protest, she staggered to her paws and talons and took first one step, then one pathetic bound towards Frieza as he stepped into his spaceship and the door slid closed behind him. She wanted nothing more than to shrug her feline shoulders, fall over to her side, close her eyes, and wait for death. But she'd lived her whole life with the knowledge that nothing mattered if Vegeta died. And she wasn't going to let him die. With three more bruised bounds, she had made her way to the saiyan's side and felt as though she had traveled the universe and run into more than one meteor shower. She knelt, pushing his chest with her nose. He didn't stir, but he _did_ breathe. The engines of Frieza's ship fired to life. Ky'ale's sharp teeth dug into Vegeta's spandex uniform and, legs trembling with exertion, she dragged him backwards, dragging him through dust and dirt and earth. She wanted to let death come, but she couldn't. The first ship began to rise above the earth. She arrived at the door of the second and prayed Frieza wouldn't see what she was about to do. She carefully let the cloth of her prince's shirt slide from her teeth and sank her jaws into the lever of the second ship's door, pulling with blind desperation and wishing, wishing she could just sleep. Wishing she could just let her broken body fall over. Wishing she didn't have to breathe. Vegeta, however, moaned quietly with pain and began to stir, and the ship Frieza was in had risen almost out of the atmosphere and she was running out of time. Desperate, now, eyes wide, she pulled and pulled.

"Ky'ale." The words were quiet and spoken with as much pain as Ky'ale felt, and she found herself automatically giving up the handle to Goku. His hands wrapped around the spit-covered lever and the door slid open; he pushed Vegeta inside the ship and let Ky'ale in before he himself limped inside, turning to close the door. There was blood sliding down his skin. As the door slid closed Ky'ale saw Frieza hovering outside his ship, one finger pointed towards the earth. Goku turned quickly towards the controls.

"How does this work?" he asked, sounding frustrated already. Ky'ale sighed and, expending more energy than she had, rose to her hind legs and reared up with her talons splayed across the control pad. She couldn't figure it out and without hands, couldn't tinker with it. The ship rocked violently at Frieza's blow sank into the earth and Ky'ale could almost scent the plates of the earth moving with the blow, shifting; could almost see the magma boiling just under the upper layer of dirt, could almost taste the screams of people boiling alive in molten rock and hear the sudden dust in the air. Oh, well. She'd tried. Now, now was time for rest, rest from running and fighting and being hurt and bloody breathing.

"Out... of... the...way." The words were tense with more than pain and Vegeta threw Ky'ale and Goku's yielding forms away from the control pad, hunkering over it like a miser over gold. His muttered curses were strangled and Ky'ale saw more than a little blood on his body, too. They were out of time. Out of bloody damned time... "Fly, fuck you," screamed Vegeta and his hands slammed onto the final button of the control pad. The engines purred to life and they were shooting through the atmosphere. They were accelerating faster than recommended while still in the stratosphere- the heat must have been wearing the outer shell of the ship down to almost nothing- but they really didn't have a choice. The explosion of the earth gave them an extra boost into space.

And that had left them, silent and alienated, bruised and broken, propelling through space. There was a re-gen tank, and Ky'ale knew she could find it if she could get up the energy to ever do more than breathe. But that was almost too much to ask. She'd been so close to at last an eternal rest that the robbery of that left her not quite knowing how to feel. Tired certainly topped the list.

As the ship first entered space Vegeta had staggered back, leaned against the wall, then slumped into a sitting position. Goku had staggered back some ways then kneeled and keeled over, whimpering the name of his son, Ky'ale simply took advantage of the long sought-after opportunity to finally fall over sideways and close her eyes tightly against light and life.

--

When Vegeta woke up- when had he fallen asleep?- the ship was still purring gently beneath the metal floor and Ky'ale and Kakarotto were breathing deeply and obviously themselves sleeping. He studied the younger saiyan and felt his eyebrows draw together, remembering the look on Kakarotto's face the minute his son had died. Somehow, that fury was contagious, and Vegeta was far from liking the half-breed child. He had killed Kold off of that same burning anger that had driven Kakarotto almost to his death against Frieza. Vegeta didn't like that. He didn't like being effected, involved.

He was very much aware that the battle had almost killed him. He was in fact a little surprised that it had not. There had to be a re-gen tank in here somewhere; all ships had re-gens, and he'd be damned if this one was any exception even if his high majesty Frieza was traveling in the other. He'd just have to find it.

Which meant standing up.

Which was not something he was looking forward to.

He commanded his leg to move and was vaguely surprised when it obeyed him without question, with only a very sharp pain in the inner thigh like someone repeatedly stabbing him. He leaned over. His back felt like it was about to break; brittle, frail. He leaned down on his palms- _god,_ he wished he didn't have to put all his weight on his shoulder like that, particularly his left shoulder, which seemed a little hesitant to obey him and was no where near good enough condition to be of use- drew his knees under him, and rose to a kneel. That took about all his energy. He knelt like that, breathing raggedly, his whole body pulsing with pain and effort. _Damn Frieza._ It was the first time in over a year he had mentally cursed someone other than Kakarotto. Well, Kakarotto and Bulma.

After a minute he refused to sit on his knees any longer and he supported himself, tenuously, with his salvageable right arm while he slowly, painfully, rose to his feet. It took all the support the metal wall could give him to keep him erect. Every time he took a step fiery lengths of pain traveled up his legs and bit deeply into his chest. He took two steps, paused to breathe. Four steps, paused to breathe. Three, pause. Seven, pause. And then, stepping carefully over the prone bodies of his two allies, he saw the tank and hobbled, limped, pathetically towards it. He wasn't quite sure how he made it. He didn't really care; the room had the look of a sort of bathroom, with the re-gen tank in the middle and tile counters around it, a mirror stretching along the right wall. There was a door and he closed it as he took off the spandex uniform that had taken quite a beating- luckily enough, there would be more such uniforms somewhere on the ship, and possibly in his size- and carefully pressed his finger into the black square at the top of the tank, letting it take a sample of skin cell. When it had registered his DNA code the tank began to fill with green liquid and he carefully slid into the viscous fluid, closing the glass door behind him.

----

Goku was aware of curse words that drifted to his thoughts and through them as if his consciousness was merely a thick fog and the real world was eons away. He was a presence trapped under miles of water and light years of space and somewhere in there was the will to breathe and cast away thought and struggle blindly towards health and life. If he opened his eyes there was overwhelming light and a tan-colored streak in his vision opening and slamming doors and growling profanity with vehemence. He closed his eyes again, the blurry images shutting back out. His head pounded. His body ached. How had this happened? Where was- no, no questions; the answers would hurt and he couldn't take any more pain. No more...

Somehow, a voice sounding strangely like his own let out a moan and, as his eyes opened just a thin slit, he saw the figure he remembered from his first look turn around and look down at him. Vegeta was wearing a black uniform looking almost exactly like his old armor, before he had joined up with Goku and his friends. Why was Vegeta wearing his old uniform? Why was Vegeta even here?

_No questions._

Vegeta raised one thick eyebrow at Kakarotto, lying prone on the floor, and watched as the younger saiyan struggled to sit up. Another moan, sounding like the saiyan prince's name, caught his attention as he was turning away and he looked over the other fighter. He remembered again the look on Kakarotto's face as he attacked Frieza in assault after hopeless assault and for once did not begrudge the other man his weakness.

"There's a re-gen tank, over there, Kakarotto," he said, and then turned back to the controls. Leaning over the keypad, he entered code after code, brow furrowed in concentration.

Goku lay prone on his back, concentrating for a long moment on breathing, living, existing; living in the pain and forcing himself not to think. But even though his mind skirted his heart had not forgotten and the constant ache reminded him of the circumstances. His eyes itched and grew hot and burned, the world jumping suddenly into a blurry whirl. He couldn't get up, re-gen or none. He couldn't move, couldn't think aside from the constant agony of grief. _Gohan._ His son. He had failed his only son...

But he remembered the end of the conflict, remembered the agony of helplessness and the gut-twisting fury and the deep-rooted mourning for the doomed human race and for his friends and for his son. It had all been a twist of emotion aimed at the people closest to him. So why had the last thing he'd been able to think about right as he thought he was truly going to die, die forever- why had the last thing he could force himself to think been about Vegeta?

Vegeta heard his name again and for the second time turned back to Kakarotto. The younger man's face was twisted with inner agony and Vegeta, saiyan or no, knew very well the source of it did not come from the wounds of Kakarotto's battle. Something inside of him twisted to match the younger saiyan's face, and it made him uncomfortable, as if he had no place in here watching Kakarotto writhe in internal turmoil. He didn't like it, not in the least. He didn't want to feel anything, he hadn't felt anything for so long that the moment he found the apathy gone it was rather like finding himself without shelter. He forced the feeling away and allowed the pounding of emotion in his chest to subside. He coated his mind and heart with ice and turned fiercely away from the other man.

Goku wondered if his quiet whisper had been heard and tried again, wondering if he would have to beg for help from the older man. He couldn't get up, and while he almost wanted to turn over and stop breathing, let himself die and follow Gohan, he knew it wasn't an option. He needed to find the Dragonballs, get them back from Frieza before the Emperor got the password from Dende, needed to bring his son _back,_ not follow him. Again, he called for the other saiyan, closed his eyes, tried again. Wondered if he was being heard and if he was heard, if he was being ignored. Focused on breathing. Focused on the pain that kept him connected with the world.

Vegeta at last gave in and left his work at the controls, closing the gap between himself and Kakarotto in two steps. The younger saiyan sighed as he approached and looked pleadingly up at him, breathing raggedly. The old armor jutted at odd angles from Vegeta's form and Goku focused hazily on its edges, on the blurring sight of the saiyan prince, of the clear imprints of cold black eyes.

"I.... can't move," he said, his voice barely more than a whisper.

Vegeta had been physically hurt more than Kakarotto. But looking at the younger man's face, he knew that he wasn't lying; he really couldn't move. He let his breath out in a hiss. _It did make him weak. Caring for other people; it _did_ weaken him. He said it hadn't; he said it hadn't and said it hadn't and said it wouldn't if I let my guard down._

"Vegeta?" The younger man was looking up, hopelessly, and there were echoes of pain within his eyes. Vegeta remembered, again, the look on his face, the look as he tried and tried to destroy Frieza. _If he had truly been a saiyan, if he hadn't let his son and wife weaken him so much- would he have been able to do it? _

The older saiyan glowered down at the younger. "What do you want me to do?" He wanted Kakarotto to say it. It was sick of him and it was a game that had been played on him numerous times, as well, and he was manipulating the other man's pain and emotions. But a disgust so massive it writhed in his throat had risen within him and he felt himself so repulsed by Kakarotto that it didn't even matter anymore.

Goku blinked back burning tears. He didn't have Vegeta's pride but he recognized the game. It didn't hurt him to say it, but it hurt him that Vegeta wanted him to. He forced away the pain, wondering what made it hurt so much. What had he expected? "I... want.... you to help.... me."

The other saiyan's upper lip raised just slightly, baring the bottom edge of his white teeth. "Why?" he whispered, and now it was a hiss, a challenge, daring Kakarotto to keep speaking until it hurt. He wanted to hurt the older saiyan, wanted to pay him back for the twisting in his stomach that Vegeta had felt, for a moment, seeing the look of Kakarotto's face; paying him back for breaking the layer of ice. He wanted to hurt Kakarotto to rebuild the shields. "Why can't you go yourself? You aren't hurt as badly as I was, Kakarotto. You're the strong one, do it yourself." It was a sneer, a challenge, a knife twisting in the younger man's gut.

Goku stared up at him, dry-lipped, unable to believe that the man he had thought he might be close to being friends with was trying to get him to say aloud that... He couldn't say it, couldn't think it; thinking it would make it real and saying it would make it replay again and again and again within his mind. Whatever he had expected it hadn't been this, that Vegeta hated him this much. His chest felt like there was some massive weight on it and between Gohan's death and Vegeta's sadism he wasn't sure which one hurt more. He should have known, he should have been able to say with certainty that his son was dead and that was the greater pain, but the look in Vegeta's eyes was colder than Frieza's had been, the hate stronger; it caught in the younger man's throat with memories of just one second where he had ever seen anything more. "I.... don't want to.... be the strong one, Vegeta." And it was true. Somewhere in there, just then or an hour before or a week or a year or a decade before, he had lost the desire to be the strongest of everyone, lost the desire to be anything but normal.

Vegeta raised one eyebrow. "No?" he asked, and it was a low and malicious hiss.

"I don't want.... to be the one everyone leans.... on.... anymore. I don't.... want to be the one every..... one counts on.... that's never... expected... to fail. I want...." What did he want? Someone to blame for Gohan's death? Someone else responsible to point the finger at?

He closed his eyes and tried to prevent the tears that welled to the surface, tried to force down the remembrance of an explosion that killed his wife and son, tried to force down the imagined sound of Gohan's scream. Gohan hadn't gotten the chance to scream. Vegeta felt the twisting in his stomach again and covered it, almost viciously, with ice. His eyes burned with inexplicable rage. "What is it you want, Kakarotto?"

"I want you to help me." And then the tears _did_ fall, one after the other. The older saiyan stood, mesmerized, watching each one fall. Feeling revulsion, as if each one were a maggot sliding down Kakarotto's face. Watching, captivated, the signs of weakness he had looked for so long, now, watching with almost morbid fascination. Kakarotto sucked in air and managed to say the rest without stopping from pain or exertion- "I'll say it, Vegeta. My son is dead. Gohan. Is. Dead." He shook with pain, shook with agony both physical and emotional. There. It was real, it was tangible, it was shoved into his face, coldly, and it happened again and again behind tightly-closed eyes. "Gohan is dead and it's my fault. There, you did it, Vegeta. You got me to say it. Congratulations." Then he couldn't talk any more, words and emotion and hurt and loss all twisted up into something unidentifiable that lodged in his throat as a mass of feeling. He felt wet drops slide down his face leaving glistening trails behind and tasted salt as they landed in the corners of his mouth.

Vegeta was the Prince of all Saiyans. He had pride, he had dignity, he had the unquenchable urge to kick Goku in the side and turn away, denying that the younger man was even the same race as him. The blatant emotion was somewhat revolting, and his clear weakness with his son gone lowered him drastically in Vegeta's eyes. But Kakarotto wasn't the only one who could remember and a wild sort of fire that had aroused in Goku's eyes that had since smouldered down to pure and unfiltered grief still lingered around the edges of the saiyan's pupils. It caught in the prince's throat as he breathed it in and the ice weakened where it protected cold emotion, melted and twisted within him.

Goku was undeniably a saiyan; Vegeta had seen it in the fury that had tainted the younger man as it had so long ago tainted him; he a son in mourning of his father and the other a father in mourning of his son. Yes, Kakarotto was a saiyan and Vegeta was the Prince of all Saiyans and if all saiyans had been crumbled down to merely two then Vegeta was responsible for both. He saw fury in black eyes and he saw humans throwing their lives away and he saw Goku shaking in grief and he felt, for one single second, almost kinship with him. It didn't last. It sustained him for one moment then dissolved, leaving him alone with Kakarotto and his revulsion and the ice and the twisting... sympathy?- that defied everything.

Vegeta chewed on his lip, then offered the other man a hand to help him to his feet. He almost didn't want to touch him, so great was his disgust for the weakness of his rival, but there was something more, now. The twisting was writing in his gut, almost pain itself. For a long moment Goku chose to ignore the hand and then his shaking fingers wrapped around Vegeta's wrist. The Prince of all Saiyans was trying to coat the emotion with ice again, again and again, but it kept melting in wake of Kakarotto's hand, which for all the sweat on the palms and the chill of the ship, was painfully warm. Distractingly.

_Oh, shit._

Somehow, Vegeta managed to manipulate the almost limp form of the larger saiyan so that Goku could lean on his shoulder. The heavier fighter dragged down on him and the palpable weight of Kakarotto's grief and guilt pushed him down. Felt like slime in the sweat on Kakarotto's palms. Revolted Vegeta, and at the same time, the twisting emotion defied the walls of ice. His chest and gut were in turmoil, twisted one way with something he couldn't recognize and another with pure disgust. He limped towards the re-gen tank, half supporting and half dragging Kakarotto beside him.

As they approached the tank he gave a short command- "Press your finger into the black square. No, there. Okay." The tank began to process it, taking in Kakarotto's DNA pattern. Sighing in both disgust and relief, the prince pushed the fighter down onto the counter and instructed him to take off his clothes and get into the tank, closing the door when the fluid began filling it. Then he turned and walked away, the corner of his eye watching Kakarotto as the younger man lifted his shaking hands, stared at them for a long moment, then fell backwards, unable to keep even sitting up, tears coursing down his face. "I can't," he heard as he reached the door. "I... can't...."

A thin drizzle of liquid fell into the tank. It would be a mess if it fell all over the room and a waste besides and Vegeta watched it in the mirror with a sort of resigned revulsion. Then he drew in thick, dark eyebrows and once more crossed the short span of space between himself and the younger saiyan. With hands that must have shaken more than Goku's, he pulled the battered shirt over the younger man's head and threw it aside, using brisk efficiency to cover to himself exactly _what_ he was doing. He was very much aware every time his fingers came into contact with the other man's skin and was, in a detached sort of way, fascinated at the heat in the flesh. He once more pulled the other saiyan to his feet and, staring a hole into the ground, pulled the orange pants to the tile floor and let Kakarotto weakly step out of them while the smaller man and the wall supported the younger saiyan. He didn't touch the underclothing. Breathing quite evenly, he pushed Kakarotto gently- _god, _but his skin was warm, it almost burned to have his palms pressed against it- into the tank, already shallowly filled with the green fluid, and, as the younger saiyan weakly pulled in his legs, started to close the door.

And that was when his eyes for the second time locked into Kakarotto's and his forcedly even breathing was gone. When he remembered how to breathe it was erratic enough. He closed the glass door.

He had seen in Kakarotto's face a number of things since he had first met him- pity, grief, kindness, charity, none of them things he even really remembered from a time when he might have felt them. But that moment he hadn't seen anything in the younger man's face but pain, eternal, deep, resounding pain.

He could understand pain. Physical pain, emotional pain, mental pain; he'd felt it all. Been manipulated and kicked and beaten into a bloody pulp metaphorically and literally on a daily basis. He'd been in more pain than most people could imagine, until he'd hardened against it. Oh, yes; he could understand pain. It didn't mean he wanted to understand Kakarotto in any way, but he could most certainly understand pain.

The sedatives in the healing fluid closed Kakarotto's eyes in sleep, and Vegeta stood watching for just a moment longer than could be explained away by inexplicable anger. Then he tore away from him and whirled on his reflection, regaining calm breaths that had been lost right before he closed Goku into the tank. He met his own eyes in the mirror and ignored the figure floating behind him, face gently emotionless in sleep. Ignored the way his hair moved in the liquid. Ignored the grief-born frown that even sleep couldn't erase from his mouth. Ignored the way he was almost entirely without clo-

Ignored it.

"I don't care about you," he snarled, glowered with true hatred at his own reflection. He leaned, palms pressed against the counter, transfixed. "I don't care about you, I don't like you, I hate everything about you. I hate that you let yourself be dragged down by yourself and the people around you and your god-damned half-breed son. I hate you, I hate you more than I've ever hated anything in my life, and I wouldn't have even cared if you had died back there, if Frieza had killed you. I. Would. Not. Have. Cared."

But his reflection obviously did not believe him and he didn't think Kakarotto would have, either.

--------

End Note: Yay! I finally managed to force some yaoi-type thoughts into thick saiyan skulls! :D Thanks, Mkh2, for telling me about the rating; I'm pretty sure this is going to wind up being somewhere in the R-range (o0... I'm technically not old enough to excuse _reading_ R-rated things, but whatever) so I don't want anyone who doesn't like the strength getting all... traumatized. -coughs-

And, in response to your rather... long-winded review (it tickles me when people are willing to spend time on such things.... ) ...Erm, sorry? Heh. Yeah, I kill characters a lot, in this case because I needed Goku being angsty. I have to do it early or I'll feel all bad about it... Anywho. I've written up halfway through Part Three on this fic, so I hope you won't mind that I didn't take constructive critisism; obviously, it would have been a difficult change to make.

Thanks again to everyone who is reviewing, has reviewed, or plans to review in the near future!


	7. Dreams and Thought Trains

Chapter Two

Dreams and Thought Trains Lead in Circles

-----

The ship was rather like an apartment, with a single bathroom beside the re-gen tank's room, a single bedroom to the right of the main suite, which itself was composed of a sitting room that was comprised of a couch, two rather stiff chairs, and a low, wooden table, a kitchen with a narrow table and a large, white refrigerator, with a thin, long counter, seperate from the sitting room by half a wall, and a very small Gravity Room. The controls of the ship were set into the wall right beside the door, which led into the sitting room but was on the side of the kitchen, had that room not been blocked off by a very short wall. The kitchen was not extraordinarily well-stocked but with only three people- even if two _were_ saiyans and one _was_ an enormous feline- it would do. There was alchohol, which Goku openly snubbed and Vegeta preferred his days without but Ky'ale loved. There was no television but none of them were very used to it, nor did any of the three care very much for it. And Vegeta planned to spend all of his time training anyway, for one.

It had been, he said when asked, most likely a ship made for a single or a pair of important, trusted warriors, like himself and Nappa, or Raditz.

"But," Goku had protested, "you and Nappa and Raditz traveled in the pods, not in anything like this." He empahasized 'this' with a wave of his hand.

Vegeta's brows drew slightly closer together, and the corners of his lips tucked slightly downward. "The pods were saiyan ships, before Frieza's conquest," he said, coldly. "We were given them to ride in after the saiyan revolt failed."

"Why?" Goku had asked, confusion writ in his face. "Was it punishment? What did you do?"

Aloud, Ky'ale said, "Never mind. Drop it, Goku." Into his mind, however, she whispered so Vegeta could not hear the telepathic words, _"It wasn't punishment. It was a gesture. The saiyans had been conquered. They acted up, and they got beaten down. Frieza was reminding the three of them that they were saiyans, too, and where revolt had gotten their predecessors."_

Goku looked at her, his forehead still wrinkled in puzzlement. He didn't have to send his thoughts to her; she could read them like her own. _So he was threatening them._

She resisted the itching urge to shake her head. Vegeta had bent over the controls again, but he would still notice the motion. _"It was a reminder. Just reminding them they were disposible, unimportant; reminding them who was boss. Frieza was all-powerful. He didn't need threats."_

Of the old inhabitants, there was no sign, but neither Vegeta no Ky'ale had expected the ubiquitous servants to leave traces. This ship was proably the transport, used to move extra supplies and if needed, act as a decoy for the first ship. Pretty much unimportant. With necessarily unimportant crew members who were necessarily discreet. So the older inhabitants had left no signs that they had ever existed except for the food and a few pairs of clothing; Vegeta had worn armor until he had dug up a black spandex uniform that fit him to replace the tattered shreds of what had been his old outfit. Then he had shed the heavy leather plates in favor of the tighter clothes that granted more movement. Goku, unable to find anything but armor to fit him and unwilling to try and fix the shreded, bloody, dirty pile of cloth that had once been his training outfit, wore leather plate armor. Vegeta snorted and said it was an improvement, but he refused to admit his approval. The difference between Goku in bright orange human garb and Kakarotto in saiyan armor was striking.

"Does this thing track ships?" Ky'ale has asked after her silent conversation with Goku. Ky'ale hadn't woken up after their first enterance until the re-gen tank was draining the vicious green fluid from around her and suddenly she wasn't in agony any more. Suddenly, it was worth it to breathe. What a revelation _that_ had been.

"Yes," Vegeta had said, not looking up. "It was already trailing ship one when when got on, it just needed to be started. I just have to keep it from wandering. Stars, black holes, magnetic feilds; they can make the tracking system waver..." The tension in his shoulders betrayed to Goku and Ky'ale what his face would look like even though his voice was completely apathic. "It's an ancient peice of shit."

After a moment he straightened. Ky'ale walked slowly to his side and he looked down, vaguely surprised that she and Kakarotto had stayed with him for the fifteen minutes. "That should keep it for a while yet," he told the cat, not looking at Goku. He had alternated from a sort of vicious anger at the younger saiyan to completely ignoring him since they had taken off two days ago. And what a fun two days it had been- Ky'ale had once counted to seven between the saiyans jumping at each other's throats- namely, Vegeta jumping at Goku's throat, but on occasion the other way around- and while the prince, with his experience on ships like this, had been some help, Goku knew very little about their specific situation or anything else helpful and spent most of his time hovering right in the corner of Vegeta or Ky'ale's feilds of vision.

Ky'ale, for her part, spent the time Vegeta was working on controls or maintenance to take a quick inventory of their supplies and their situation. They had enough food for maybe a month, if she could convince her two travel companions to stop eating such enormous meals, enough water for maybe three if they were careful, including the water for showers and for the re-gen if they didn't need it too much, and enough fuel to keep them going for quite some time. They had more clothing than she had expected, including some rather striking formal outfits that looked uncannily human, pairs of shoes for creatures that were assuredly anything _but_ human, and more of the black spandex outfits Vegeta favored so much.

The time Vegeta _wasn't _working on the controls, she and he sparred. For two days they had spent most of their time in training, almost constant training. Goku had watched with a sort of disturbed fascination for Vegeta's determined, single-minded obsession that kept him striving for Goku's prowess even in such circumstances as they were in. Finding the GR had been like walking into a candy store for the saiyan prince.

The rest of the time Vegeta was eating or sleeping. Or, at least, trying to sleep. He'd claimed the bedroom as soon as he could, Goku deciding to meekly sleep on the couch and Ky'ale, after attempting an arrangement on the foot of the small bed, sleeping on the floor. Grudgingly. And not quietly. But even after Ky'ale's disgruntled murmurring wore away Vegeta lay, the first night and half of the second, staring into darkness and forcing his thoughts to nothingness, trying hard to sleep around the sounds of even breathing coming from outside the bedroom, louder even than the slightly-wheezing breaths of the kairn. Over the past two days the sound had gotten harder to listen to every time he was forced to and he refused to acknolege any reason for it. And when he did sleep, he dreamed. The dreams weren't the usual, senseless fragments of disjointed thought he was plagued with, of theoretical horror or wordless, intangible fear. Nor were they even mostly about the other saiyan who slept maybe twenty feet away, mouthing desperate words. They were strange, twisted memories, memories that had somewhere in his mind changed. He had twisted, legs tangling in the sheets of the bed, eyes squeezed shut against the permeating darkness.

_He was twelve again, and he lay, leaning against the metal wall, in the cell where Frieza stored him when he wasn't training. Ky'ale curled up across the cell, head on her talons, the rise and fall of her golden flank the only indication she still lived. She slept a lot, nowadays. They said kairn did that at the juvenile stage of their lives; they had to sleep alot and eat alot, like very small saiyan children. They said that as they forced her awake by prying open her eyes via telepathy and pounded fighting techniques into her head. Vegeta would have felt sorry for her, but he had no pity left. The same had been done to him all his life._

_He reached out, tentatively, to her mind and pulled the calm out of her heart. The kairn shuddered, seized by a brief fit of anxiety, but it passed after a moment and Vegeta relaxed, feeding off the dreamless sleep of his bodyguard. He was, even then, vaguely aware that it was manipulating and using Ky'ale. He didn't care; he'd always been told that this, among other similar uses, was what the kairn were for. It didn't matter that Ky'ale was the last. It certainly didn't matter they were in the same boat, metaphorically speaking; people in the same boat always fought and snapped and used each other, it was how you knew who was captain, after all. She was his bodyguard and she was there for his disposal. If she was awake, she would have given to him until she'd been as terrified and tense as Vegeta himself had been, and nothing had changed when she slept. Of course, if she was awake she would have been as anxious as Vegeta. _

_"Prince." The voice was a whisper and it had been a scream when it had actually happened, but Ky'ale woke the same way- springing to her feet, fur sticking out, glimmering gold, and moving as fast as she could between the door and Vegeta. "Prince! Prince Vegeta!"_

_The voice was different, too. Vegeta recognized it. "Gohan?" The young prince took one step closer and the door was gone, which made perfect sense in the strange context of the dream. The half-breed stood, eyes wide with fear. _

_"Prince! The saiyans are revolting!" He dropped to his knee and looked up with human eyes. "They're revolting, Vegeta; they're overthrowing Frieza! We're going to win!"_

_His breath caught in his throat the same way it did when the real report had been made, although he had never seen that messanger's face and hadn't left the cell that time. Now he got to choose. He felt Ky'ale's presense beside him and knew she would follow him whether he stayed in the cell or not. And he wanted to go, wanted to help Gohan and the others kill Frieza. But if he did, he would be joining the fight, and if he joined the fight he would be one of their numbers. He would belong. Belonging was one step closer to caring. Caring was a step closer to the greatest possible weakness. _

_"Vegeta!" Gohan's human eyes were wide with anxiety. "We have to hurry, Vegeta! They need us! They need you, Vegeta." The subservience he had shown before was gone and he reached out, trying to pull the prince out to help defeat Frieza and his empire. Vegeta didn't want to be needed. He didn't want to need anyone. He wanted to sit alone and become stronger, ever stronger, wanted to be alone and powerful and not let anyone get in the way. But the human eyes of the half-breed were dark and pleading and looked like they could see through him, through him and to something he couldn't quite understand. Vegeta reached back out and let the child- child? He himself was only twelve, and yet even in the dream he felt much older, older than he had been when the revolt had occurred- grab him around the wrist and pull him down the shadowed hallways._

_The ice was melting. Oh, lord, the ice was melting and there was nothing he could do. Vegeta felt it and pressed forward, aware that he couldn't survive back in the cell without the frozen barricades. He needed to be in the group fighting Freiza to survive without the ice. The group was no longer the saiyans that it had actually been; in the dream, it had changed but he had known it would. He pressed forward, and the walls melted and he felt something warm and wet drip onto his hand, right above where Gohan clutched his wrist. Something scarlet slid down his skin and he recoiled in horror, watching as more and more blood fell in a fountain, a cataract, a massive tsunami from a black and red wound swallowing his chest. He pulled back, snatching his wrist from Gohan's hand, and stared, transfixed, at the bloody skin on his right arm. Gohan looked at him and the worry in his eyes widened the wound._

_"Vegeta?" He knew he shouldn't turn around. Ky'ale's presense was behind him- it always was- but there was another and he knew who it would be, and what would happen if he turned around. He clutched the last of his ice to him and pressed his palms against the wound in his chest. It didn't hurt- there was no pain in dreams- but there was certainly the implication of pain to his fevered mind. He knew it would be a mistake to turn around. He knew he shouldn't. But the concern, the compelling- what? The compelling worry, the compelling kindness, the acceptance, the guilt, the _care_?- tangible within the voice had him turning even as his mind screamed he should not. _

_He met the younger saiyan's eyes and the heat within Kakarotto's expresson melted the last of the ice. The blood poured out- oh, gods, the blood poured out- and the wound in his chest swallowed him and suspended him in darkness where the gods, the malevent, sick gods, laughed and laughed and laughed...._

He'd woken up and lay, silent, lying on his back, listening to the other two quiet voices of breathing to his right. The echoes of the dream resonated in his head, and suddenly every breath in the younger saiyan's voice seemed louder, looming over him, quietly mocking what he couldn't have.

_What he didn't want. _

His eyebrows drew together as he glowered at the ceiling, feeling an unfounded anger churn in his gut. What he couldn't... where had that come from? He was the Prince of all Saiyans; he could have whatever he wanted. He could have power. He could have immortality. He could have, if he had any inclination to have them, any friends or allies he wanted.

_I don't care about him,_ he snarled to himself. _I never did. He's only someone trying to stand in the way of immortality, and someone trying to kill Frieza. I don't care about him. I wouldn't care if he was dead. I wouldn't care if everyone from that damn planet never came back._

Trying hard not to wake Ky'ale, he sat up and swung his legs over her, pulling the spandex pants of his outfit back on in the dark. He avoided the bodyguard by the sound of her breathing; this was not the first room they had shared or the first time he had been forced to find his way around her sleeping form in the dark and he could do it just as well without being able to see as he could with light. He managed to get to the door without waking her. He hadn't expected to be able to open it, and as he'd thought, the moment the bolt slid from the door her head was up and the light from the slight crack sliding, serpentine, around the door and along the metal floor, reflected from opaque-looking gold eyes. Her pupils were swollen in the dim illumination so much that there was no white to be seen and only a sliver of black iris.

"Vege-"

"Go back to sleep, Ky'ale." Almost an inperceptible whisper, but Ky'ale could take the thought out of his head if she couldn't hear.

"What's wrong?"

"Go back to sleep." He opened the door a little more and stood framed by the gray light until the cat's head lowered back to her talons and those huge gold eyes closed. The room looked darker as soon as they were shut, and in the shadow Vegeta backed into the body of the ship, gently closing the door back. Goku's breathing was still perfectly even and his eyes were closed in dreamless-seeming sleep, his face completely impassive with thoughtlessness. Vegeta forced his eyes away, walking quietly across the room, to the kitchen, walking to where the half-wall seperated it from the sitting room and leaned, eyes tightly closed against the slivers of light shining from stars and planets through the small, round windows in the ship, against the metal wall. He thought of quiet breathing and touched the walls within his mind, finding the dream had been only a dream and the ice was still there. He built it up, built it up and closed his eyes against the heat, locked himself into frozen heartlessness.

Goku, lying on his back on the couch, kept his eyes closed and his breathing studiously even, but listened to the prince's footsteps, his breathing, and wished he could open his eyes without breaking the mood that hovered about Vegeta's pacing. He could picture the image in his mind, however, and maybe that was superior anyway to what he would really see. With his eyes closed he could see neither the lines under Vegeta's eyes or mouth, telltale signs of sleepless nights and haunting dreams. He could only see the older saiyan's face with the faint light from faraway stars in his cold eyes and dark hair. He banished the mental image as soon as he recognized it for what it was, however, feeling heat travel with strange speed to his face. _God damn it._

This was not the first time this had happened to him in the past two days and he was beginning to be irratated with it, with its twisting circles and very existance that defied the logic that had always, one way or another, dominated Goku's views of the human heart. He was already in love, and once in love, things like... things like... things like _that_ stopped. Where had that come from, anyway? _Vegeta? _Why Vegeta, of all the people in the universe?

_God. I'm making this out to be ridiculous._ Two days, and already he was jumping to conclusions. He was assuming this didn't have a logical reason behind it, that maybe this wasn't just kinship, friendship he felt for the other man. His friends had always told him he was amazingly in tune with what he felt but he almost laughed when he thought about it now; he was misreading his own emotions, this time. He couldn't be... he couldn't feel... it was hard to articulate it, even to himself. He couldn't feel... _amorous_, that was it; he couldn't feel amorous for Vegeta, that wasn't... right. He'd never felt that way for anyone but Chichi and he didn't plan on starting now. It couldn't actually be real. It couldn't be relevent. It wouldn't matter even if it was.

_I need more sleep. I'm tearing my mind apart with these thought trains..._ And he was tired. But he heard soft sounds of someone moving around to his left and the quiet breathing kept him awake better than anything, no matter how loud, ever had before.

Vegeta opened the refrigerator with cold abandon in every indeliberate motion. There was beer and scotch in little bottles on the door, he noticed without interest. Ky'ale would have, in his circumstances, gotten herself extremely drunk and passed out on the floor. Ky'ale was weak. Vegeta fostered no dependencies, on people or... beverages. The fastest way to become dependant is to use a crutch when it is offered. He drank water. It didn't do very much but he'd been unable to shut out every feeling and his throat was suddenly very dry.

_This is pathetic._ The thought was bitter and tinged with familiar self-hatred. Hatred was safe, hatred was old ground, an old friend. _Weak. I can't believe this. I should have gotten over this days ago, not let it control me, not let it haunt me, not.... any of this. _He dropped the glass onto the counter and walked to where the half-wall ended and the kitchen led into the sitting room. Stood in the edge of the shadow and the faint silver light and felt something inside of him twisting again as he stared at a slightly darker patch in the gray monotone.

_Pathetic._ Lifting the corner of his lip, the older saiyan strode through the room, brows drawn together in self-directed anger as well as an unfounded rage against Kakarotto. More-or-less unfounded, anyway.

The younger saiyan listened to heavy footsteps and his breath caught in his throat as they drew closer, though that was stupid and he knew full well that Vegeta wasn't intentionally walking towards him. _This is Vegeta._ The gravity room was across the sitting room from the kitchen. There was little question where he was going. _This is Vegeta; he tears you apart in every way possible for the simple reason that you have emotion and he can use it. This is stupid. _He opened dark eyes as Vegeta walked past, and his innards leapt within his ribcage and lodged in the lower portion of his throat, still pulsing along in their innard duties. Vegeta wasn't worth it, he couldn't feel that way for somehow who hated him so much, someone he had never even really seen before behind the masks he insisted on putting over himself. And yet he couldn't _convince_ himself that the prince wasn't worth it. He couldn't.... He settled for murmurring, "Vegeta?"

The saiyan prince paused, and some of the faint light from outside shone and glimmered, reflected on the surface of his eye. Goku's breath caught slightly in his throat and he turned the sound into a cough. Vegeta felt suddenly rather transparent and threw up the walls he had hidden behind his whole life, tighter than even Ky'ale could penetrate, boxing himself into a little world of private thought. His eyes grew suddenly hard and cold and the light that glimmered in his eye seemed almost faceted as if his eyes themselves had turned to ice or cystal. His mouth thinned. "Go to sleep," he snarled, apathic.

Goku blinked sleepily, the back of the couch throwing his own face into shadow. Vegeta, he realized suddenly, was not wearing a shirt. The shadows hid his blush. They also hid the angle of his eyes. _Why does he always insist on wearing _spandex? Blocking out further thoughts he tore his eyes away and focused on noble memories of his wife. "Why are you awake?" he drawled, sleep making his words almost slur.

"I'm going to train," the older saiyan replied, angular face harsh and stark in the dim light and deep shadows. Goku had worn his lip until it actually felt sore. He wasn't supposed to think that. _It's expected. I'm fighting with my wife and I'm trapped in a little ship hurtling through almost entirely empty space with one other compatible creature, and even if that other person does think worse of me than anyone ever has before and would probably prefer to share a spaceship with a mind-eating slug, a ranting Dungeons and Dragons fanatic, or any severe STD, it's expected that... Lord. He's Vegeta. To face facts, he's Vegeta and there's nothing... He's.... Vegeta. _

He blinked, confused by his own thoughts, and Vegeta had turned away and began striding purposefully towards the GR. Goku smiled slightly and couldn't stop himself; he had known that there would be silver highlights in the black hair because of the faint light from- _Vegeta. Don't forget who you're thinking about..._ "You want some help? I'll spar with you." He struggled to sit up.

"I can handle myself," had been Vegeta's cold reply. He'd let himself fall back into the couch and stare into darkness, trying not to think of anything in particular. Goku had never been one to avoid his thoughts when he didn't like them but thinking hadn't done him the least bit of good and despite all of his excuses for the way he had begun to think the ice in Vegeta's voice had hurt more than anything anyone had said to him before. So he had stared into darkness until he'd slept again.

That had been the night before. Vegeta straightened from the controls and frowned at them, one hand still resting on the intricate, foreign keys. It had, at least, been most of the night. The rest had been spent fighting the automatic AI, the whirling discs and shooting beams that threatened to tear him apart if his mind wandered. He needed that. He hadn't needed his mind to wander. But when Ky'ale had woken up he'd left the room to eat breakfast. Somehow, the kairn managed to cook. It usually involved her manipulating things with her nose or maw, or pushing them around with her talon. Ineffecient, sure, but it worked.

Before going to breakfast he'd stopped by the re-gen to repair the minor damages and Goku had walked into the room as he'd walked out of the tank. The result had been quite a bit of blushing and sudden, embarassing motions and by unspoken concensus the event had never happened. It left Vegeta fighting down uncomfortable warmth and wondering, for the first time, what Kakarotto thought behind the strange and human emotions in his dark eyes. What would he think if he knew what Vegeta thought, or if he did know, if Vegeta knew he knew what the prince thought. He didn't think Kakarotto knew. He hoped he didn't know.

But then, it was Kakarotto, and generally it was fairly safe to say he neither knew nor thought.

As for Goku, there had barely been an hour between the moment and when he'd met Vegeta that he hadn't wondered where the saiyan prince's thoughts led. Beyond the cold ice in the other man's eyes he couldn't really comprehend anything existing, though he knew with the gut faith he'd lived his life by there was more, and that had life been kinder it would have shown on the outside, as well. After eating Vegeta had been mostly working on the controls. They'd apparently wandered pretty close to a black hole and while the surge of gravity and magnetism hadn't been close enough to completely fry the mechanics he'd had to completely reset the tracking and apparently the surge had kicked up some default locks. Ky'ale had alternatively lurked behind him and catnapped on the couch. Goku, without the distractions of friends or family, had trained for a few minutes in the GR- it hadn't had much appeal without someone to spar with and he'd been unable to keep his mind completely on the workout- and then mostly sat around, talking idly with Ky'ale or flipping through magazines that were completely foreign but had some very intriguing pictures, the majority of which seemed to be strange and colorful creatures engaging in some sort of sex-like activity with body parts completely alien. While he'd never been much entranced by pornography and the warped and animal creatures were in no way arousing, they were fascinating through a biology perspective. Goku hadn't been much more into biology than pornography but certainly he was raptly fascinated with the alien perspective on something he had long considered, of course not rightfully, completely human.

Vegeta straightened with a sudden and victorious snarl and leaned against the half-wall keeping the kitchen blocked off from immediate enterance from the door, glowering at the computer screen. It flickered once, then appeared to obey. The thin lips curved upward into a savage smile and the light from a nearby planet- why did planets glow in space?- turned the glassy surfaces of his eyes into black fire and set silver-blue highlights into his hair. _Well,_ Kakarotto amended, jerking his gaze away with a stifled gasp and similarly repressed blush, _mostly human._

--------

A/N: Well. This chapter was probably the one I had to butcher the most when I looked back on it a few weeks ago. I'm still not entirely happy with it (I still think it's not quite methodical enough, but I'm not spending eight chapters playing emotional tennis with saiyan testicles), but at least I managed to keep from screwing up the works of anyone's computer with the fluff.... Okay, so I NEVER put fluff this early in the fic, but it still moved too fast. Heh. Okay.

I'm so mean to poor Goku. o0...

Anywho.... Sorry this chapter took so long, like the last one... NaNoWriMo's this month, so I'm fairly busy... I'll prolly put something to that effect on my profile, if you don't know what NaNoWriMo is. I haven't worked on the part of the story I'm actually writing and as I'm constantly editing what I have as I publish it takes some time to get a chapter ready.


	8. Amorous for Vegeta

Chapter Three

Amorous for Vegeta

Kekeh... That chapter title's a joke meant for those who've seen "About Adam..." Anywho. I love the beginning of this chapter; notsomuch the ending. I know it took forever; NaNo, I repeat. In both NaNo and this, we're starting to sorta-kinda-get-somewhere. Speaking of which, here's a joke off of Gaia, found by a friend whose a member there:

Q: How many DBZ characters does it take to screw in a lightbulb?

A: Only one, but it takes five episodes.

Enjoy the chapter, and remember to always review! :D

--

Sometimes dreams mean things. Most of the time they don't and they're fragments of logical thought mixed up in the giant blender of our minds until they make no sense and play on rationality so tauntingly that they have us searching for deeper meaning until there is next to nothing of the original dream within our minds before the dissection ends. Some are merely stories played by our minds when nothing in our head is still awake but the errant and raving muse. Some still are fragments of things long forgotten that our subconcious wishes to resurrect, if for no reason but to throw the modern day into confusing contrast. But some dreams mean things. Sometimes they reawaken ideals long forgotten or create ideals of their own or try and send a message to the headstrong concious mind that wouldn't listen to its subconcious counterpart in any setting aside from dreamscape. Sometimes they're subtle, most of the time they're subtle, because the concious mind enjoys the dissection of thought and loves being led in circles and so unsubtle messages are often taken apart so quickly they end up meaning nothing. But Goku had always done better with unsubtle messages. So he was glad these were the messages _his_ subconcious preferred to send, though he never really thought about it.

_He didn't know how he'd died. His mind never told him, all he knew was that he'd been laughed at- scoffed at, more- and the guards had moved aside to let him, laughing as well, pass onto Snake Road. He had only a few days before he saw his family and friends again and his heart hammered in anticipation. It hardly mattered that his death meant Frieza was still alive and probably immortal. That Dende would be tortured until Porunga was summoned. Somehow, all of that had been smoothed over and he was allowed to die and find his kindred in peace. _

_Some details, of course, were blurred. It was always so with dreams. The clouds were more yellow-gold than usual, they weren't in the least bit dimmed but flaming with color. The road had no texture beneath his feet. There were fewer curves, and he didn't get tired as he ran, faster than he had ever run in his life. When he rested, it was more because he knew through the dreaming that he should be tired more than because he was._

_"Hello, Goku." The voice was familiar but the tone didn't match it; too happy, too cheerful, too... He couldn't put his finger on it. But it was indeed Ky'ale standing behind him, tail waving back and forth, eyes blazing just as brightly as the clouds around her in a head cocked slightly to the side. "I knew I'd meet you here. Vegeta's already there."_

_Even in the dream, the anticipation of getting There was suddenly amplified. "Why aren't you with him?" he asked Ky'ale. He didn't ask how they'd gotten into Heaven. Somehow, he figured in the dream he must have known, because the saiyan and the kairn _had_ died at the same time he had. They must have done something heroic. _

_She'd lifted her shoulders in the same vertical shrug she'd always done but it somehow seemed less heavy, less sardonic than before. "I came to meet you," she'd said. "Figured you'd want some company. It's a long road, and Vegeta didn't mind going alone."_

_He'd figured it out, then. The desperation was gone. The single-minded determination that nothing should come to harm Vegeta, the focused certainty that her life revolved around him, that her purpose was to protect her prince to her own death without getting anything out of it, without ever expecting anything. She'd had, in real life, little character beyond that focus, beyond that ideal. Beyond Vegeta, there was very little Ky'ale. Now there was, a golden-eyed, cheerful feline who grinned at him and waved her tail back and forth and flicked on ear slightly, catlike. It was Ky'ale, the real Ky'ale, who should have been, would have been, if things had been better, if only despairing life had been kinder. _

_And if that was Ky'ale, he knew who waited for him just off the rattle tail of Snake Road. He and the cat took the rest of the road in a few minutes._

And the rest of the dream, Goku wouldn't analyze. If Vegeta and Ky'ale hadn't still been asleep and the lights hadn't been off he was quite certain his face would be glowing in the flourescents, and he felt the heavy heat in his face. And, truth be told, pretty much everywhere else. It devoured him, and he let it for a few minutes before fighting it back with the weapon-like memory of his _wife_, his _son_, his attempts at a family. It slowly cooled the warmth but it couldn't erase the dream, the implications of the rather impacting ending. _God. I haven't had a dream like that since I was fifteen and Krillin had taken those magazines from Master Roshi's room. _Krillin had always called him innocent and he never denied it; the older boy had claimed such thoughts as commonplace in his mind and had constantly tried to make Goku's a suffeciently dirty place for him to exist in. But despite the attempts of his friend Goku had remained almost saintly. The few dreams after Krillin stole the magazines had been pretty much the extent of the thoughts or dreams and he hadn't ever had sex with anyone until he married Chichi.

So he was innocent. And a good husband, and a great father, and never distracted by stupid things that left Krillin immobile and Yamcha static and drooling. And then one bitchy saiyan had come along and ruined all of that with one blow, one spaceship and two sporiatic bursts of incredible eye contact. Goku groaned and pressed his fingers into his eyes, arching his back and pressing his head into the pillows. _Vegeta! I can't be feeling this way about Vegeta. Thinking this way. And Chichi's been dead for what, almost four days now?_

He might have been able to handle his new turmoil over Vegeta if it weren't for Chichi. He might have been able to handle Chichi and their continous downward spiral if it weren't for Vegeta. He couldn't, couldn't, handle them both at once. There were only so many problems, confrontations, he could avoid at once.

Saiyans could fall in love. He thought. Had he loved Chichi when they first met? A week ago he would have said yes, on the spot, voraciously, defensively. A week ago he would have had someone worth defending it against. Now he honestly couldn't remember. Had he loved her, or had he merely assumed he had because in all the stories when one person loved another the love was by definition mutual? And if saiyans _could_ fall in love, could they fall out of love as well? Or had feelings for Chichi never existed beyond the protective friendship he felt as strongly for Bulma?

Again, he groaned, and turned over, facing the rough cordouroy of the back of the couch. He needed sleep. He needed a long night of dreamless sleep to refresh the energy he kept using trying to forget, trying to understand. He hoped he could get through the reflective surface of sleep and to the opaque darkness beneath but as he closed his eyes and a chain of images followed- Frieza's anger and hate-stoked power, the long line of dragon tail, Dende's face contorted with pain, Vegeta slow and coldly victorious smile- he realized this was a rather unlikely blessing. He had too many problems his concious mind was likely to shirk, that his unconcious mind had to step in and try and discover a solution of its own. The problem was- Goku's mind slipped deeper into the tantalizing line of unconciousness and the rest of the thought was punctured and scattered by a yawn- the problem was, his unconcious was too prone to doing what was good for him. And that had dangerous aftermath, sometimes; sometimes, that ruined everything. No, he needed his concious mind to complicate and drag things out. It was... another yawn... for the... best.

--

The world narrowed to the space between Ky'ale's golden eyes and Vegeta's tensed and energy-wrapped form. They were moving but by the constant space they might as well have been standing still. Each knew the other well enough that they could anticipate moves the executer hadn't even considered yet. Ky'ale followed every motion of Vegeta's flowing pattern, ready for the perfect moment to attack, fur raised along her spine and hackles, lips drawn back from glistening teeth. Vegeta twisted and moved within his pattern but despite everything he couldn't throw off the kairn or persuade his bodyguard into premature attack. And therefore, there was only one thing he could do to break the stalemate- he continued his pattern until he broke it with as little warning as he could manage, slamming his foot into the bottom of Ky'ale's jaw. She had been anticipating an attack sooner or later and managed to go limp enough that the attack did little but throw her backwards but his second attack, which tore her out of the air and threw her to the metal floor, did much more. Snarling audibly, she rose to her paws and talons and threw herself into the air just as a beam of yellow light tore into the metal where she had lain. Her reflection disaperated into flare of painful saffron.

The pattern did not return; it never did after it was broken, like a glass sculpture they would make between them then smash into a thousand tiny and glittering peices. Ky'ale fell backwards to avoid a vicious kick and bit deeply into the saiyan's foot, then yelped when Vegeta's other foot swung around to catch her in the temple.

When she fell, she landed at Kakarotto's feet. The younger saiyan took one step backwards, smiling broadly, and with one hand wrapped around her horn, helped her to her feet. The kairn shook her head and blinked stars out of her eyes. She hated it when Vegeta did that. Pain pulsed both where he'd kicked her and her other temple and every inch of brain in between. Damn.

Vegeta slowly landed in almost exactly the same way he'd done when Goku had appeared only a few days before Frieza came. He remembered the heat in the other man's eyes and carefully avoided them, letting his feet slowly press against the metal floor. He could hear his heart beating. Why didn't Ky'ale or Kakarotto respond to the pounding, why did they just stand there as if they couldn't hear it? Surely, Frieza could hear it by now. It jarred the rest of him. He tried to repress it but it was taking all of his willpower to keep his ice, to keep his mind and emotions behind the walls, frozen in time and space. Those thoughts, that hammering tattoo in his chest, neither were his own. If he repeated it to himself he could believe it.

He didn't look at Kakarotto. He stared at the floor at Ky'ale's feet, at the blur of golden tan marked with more detail the closer to the metal the particular body part got. He couldn't have looked at Kakarotto and maintained his sheilds. He couldn't.

Goku stared quietly at Vegeta, wondering vaguely what he had _done_ to Ky'ale. She didn't seem to even notice their strange reactions to one another- she was glaring at a spot on the floor with an intensely pained look on her feline face. He couldn't see bruises past the golden-tan fur. He didn't really pay attention. Vegeta wasn't even looking at him and he still had to force his gaze away. He put the thoughts that came to him aside for later speculation.

"Vegeta?" The saiyan's black eyes didn't move. Goku took that as an indication to continue. He took a deep breath and just threw it out there; there was no point in trying to lead into the point. "Vegeta, I think a lot more could be gained... if you would let me spar with you." Air that hadn't been used up in speech was let out in a quiet sigh.

"No." It was a cold responce, immediate, almost snapping. _As if he thinks I'm going to fight with him over it!_ Chichi would find the idea barbaric- fighting over fighting, the worst of the uncivilized behavior. Vegeta understood entirely. It was not a thought train he was going to pursue.

Fighting, no, but he would argue his point. "Vegeta, you're stronger than Ky'ale. Much stronger. You can't get any better just beating the shit out of her." The profanity just.... escaped and he saw one eyebrow rise even though the saiyan Prince didn't move his gaze. Ky'ale looked up breifly, shocked, and one ear perked forward when she noticed the different fixations of the two saiyans. "She's wasting her energy and while helping her improve can't hurt it'll just slow you down." He hoped Vegeta understood. He hoped Ky'ale understood, too, but he didn't really worry; Ky'ale would never contradict anything that would be for Vegeta's good and she couldn't really argue it.

Neither, of course, could Vegeta. Neither, of course, did he try. "No," was all he said and all he needed to say.

"Vegeta, I need it, too." It was then that Vegeta looked up and Goku met cold, dark eyes that hid something behind them. They were transfixed again; he forced his mouth to open and tongue to move, but he was staring at the spark he could see behind the ice in Vegeta's glare. "I can't just keep training against the computer; the computer is neither human nor saiyan, nor anything else of any use for that matter. It doesn't think, it doesn't anticipate, it doesn't really fight at all. Please, Vegeta; we both need this if we're going to defeat Frieza and I..." He couldn't finish. He couldn't move. He was surprised to realize he still posessed the ability to breathe. For a second, a breath, less than either, the ice was gone and something enormous blazed behind the dark eyes of the Prince of all Saiyans, burning out everything else from Goku's mind. All there was were two dark eyes and spreading flame.

And then it was gone and the expressions had again frozen over and become completely neutral. Goku couldn't tell what it was he'd seen. He couldn't tell for certain he'd seen it. He'd taken a step forward and hadn't noticed it. Ky'ale was closer and she was staring at him, then over at Vegeta, then back at Goku. The confusion tinting golden eyes surprised Goku.

_She doesn't know... what I... what... She doesn't have a clue. _He hadn't expected that. He'd naturally thought she'd guessed everything correctly. He supposed, in hindsight, it was obvious that she wouldn't be able to gauge human culture-based expressions as well as, say, the expressions of her own kin. Even after years with Vegeta; after all, he never showed emotion anyway.

"Ky'ale." Vegeta's voice broke the spell of silence. He was staring at the floor again with an expression of intense self-hatred that glazed over in another instant with nothingness. Something inside of Goku shook at the sight, and he wanted to... it didn't matter what he wanted to do. It wasn't what Vegeta would want, he knew that much. _But god. He's so.... lost. Such high standards for himself. _He wanted to help him, that was the easiest way to put it. Never mind how he wanted to. Never mind that he would cut off a limb if he could get away with it, wrapping his arms around the smaller man and sheltering him from the world and himself. Telling him the things his grandfather had told him when his training went wrong- that it wasn't his fault, things went wrong, there were so many more important things than just being strong. 'Having a reason to be strong, a reason to fight, is the top one,' the human had said and Goku remembered nearly ever word of the lecture. Getting lost within dark eyes that held so much more than just darkness....

He stared down at the dark spots in Vegeta's blurry reflection and listened as he continued his command to his bodyguard. "Heal. I'll spar with Kakarotto until you get back, and then we'll continue." Brisk, cold commands. There was a moment of shocked silence before Ky'ale nodded, winced, and turned to leave, hesitating at the door. Goku stood in shock. _He's actually willing to be in the same room as me? Let me help him?_ He hadn't expected to actually win that argument.

"Good luck, Vegeta," was all Ky'ale said after studying the two saiyans for a long moment, with a certain amount of time glowering at Goku; then she was gone and the door closed- probably pushed by a hind paw- and Kakarotto and Vegeta were alone.

Goku could have stood and stared until Ky'ale got back. Luckily enough, Vegeta had no such plans. "You will not let me win," he commanded, shortly.

"Of course not." Goku forced a cheerful, competitive grin and shot towards his opponent, swinging one foot over to catch him in the stomach.

----

Men, Ky'ale decided as the viscous liquid drained away around her talons, were completely insane. As well as impossible. She couldn't keep up with Vegeta's moods and masks, and wasn't allowed to anyway, and being alone in her mind with the faint echoes of the saiyan prince's thoughts carefully sealed behind ice walls was strangely uncomfortable. She pushed open the tank's door with her nose and jumped onto the clean tile floor, pulling a towel from the rack with her teeth and nudging it out to full spread, standing on it to carefully shake her fur dry. With a sigh, she stepped off of it and picked it up with her teeth, putting it up on the counter and spreading it out again. Vegeta got angry with her the last time she regenerated and she dripped the water everywhere she walked; she'd have to let her fur dry before she left the regen room. Not that she really wanted to go back there, anyway. There was something between Vegeta and Goku and whether it was a new and strange friendship or just a new level to their rivalry it shut her out. On her own, alone, she was at least outcasted by choice. She jumped up onto the counter and lay on the towel with a slow sigh.

_"Dende? Can you hear me?"_ She'd only talked to the Namic once since taking off and she wasn't sure she could get a good mental connection. To her surprise, Dende's voice was as clear as one of her own thoughts when he replied. Distance didn't matter- she could talk to Gohan if she could say anything to him that wouldn't crush him or give him false hopes- but she and Dende had never been exactly close. This was probably only the fourth time she'd talked to him telepathically and maybe the sixth talking to him at all.

_"Ky'ale? Thank god, I'd thought something had happened."_ Dende always amused Ky'ale- he couldn't be much older than Gohan but he was both more polite and infinitely more mature. She supposed it was being the Guardian of an entire planet. Maybe combined with the experience of seeing that planet explode. _"Is everything okay over there?"_

He didn't ask where 'there' was. Ky'ale hadn't told him too much about what they were going through and he didn't ever ask about anything. Both of them knew exactly how easily Frieza could pull information from malleable minds. _Pain, pain pulling her mind apart, digging into her soul, black and gray and choking her. It was evil, it was everything, it was all she was. A question penetrated her mind, and she barely heard it through the fog of pain but it was like a log she clung to, a promise that she could still return to the world of normal thought and normal movement. "Tell me about the prince's plans. Tell me what Vegeta plans to do..."_

Ky'ale shook off the thoughts and the uncomfortable guilt they carried. She could feel the same guilt in another within her mind and wondered what it was that Dende had betrayed. She didn't blame him. She couldn't. She would have done the same. As a result, she never told either Vegeta nor Goku she was in communication with the Namic; they wouldn't understand, they'd never undergone it. _Ky'ale, Ky'ale, you've already betrayed him. Feels nice, doesn't it? Whose bigger now, cat? Whose bigger? Do it again, Ky'ale. You're already dirt, dirt to him; it makes you feel big, talk again. Talk again, or back comes the pain. Back comes the pain...._

_"Everything's fine, Dende."_ She couldn't say anything different. Everyone was alive and that was enough for now. _"I'm just glad to hear you. I was worried, you know; didn't know if you were alive still."_

_"He won't kill me. Not yet."_

_"If you give in, not ever. Tame a Namic, tame a dragon. Or so the saying goes."_

There was a long pause. It was true and both of them knew it. If Dende gave up and relented, Frieza would keep him alive indefinitely. _"I won't give in to him."_

_Pain, pain all around, and she heard a voice speaking, screaming, in wordless pain that eventually turned to articulate pain. And she realized a second later to her horror and her revulsion who that voice belonged to._

_She couldn't stop. She wanted to stop. But oh, god, the pain..._

She didn't believe Dende. He believed himself but there was enough of a quaver of fear in his tone that she couldn't believe that he was going to commit to it forever. To a lifetime of pain followed by the Hell that follows traitors and the tortured. But although she didn't believe he would come through for them, she trusted him. There was nothing else she could do. What could she do? Threaten him? Laughable. What could they do next to what Frieza could do?

_"And if- when- he uses you to summon the dragon?"_ It had to be asked. And the answer was a given though she couldn't believe it, either. They'd gone through this before. They had to go through it again. Ky'ale's chest throbbed with the pain of memory.

_"I'll lie to Porunga,"_ Dende whispered into her mind. _"I'll tell him to bring back Earth. Or something."_

_"He'll kill you."_

_"I know."_ It was all that needed to be said. She didn't believe him. How could she? How could he, how could he stand against Frieza when she... she could not?

_I was a kitten,_ part of her mind pleaded.

_It doesn't matter,_ responded a harder portion that sounded uncannily like Vegeta. _You betrayed him. You quailed. It doesn't matter._

It didn't matter. She sent Dende a wordless wave of trust and hope and severed the connection, resting her head on her talons and closing out the light until she was again trapped inside the memories, memories of pain. Vegeta wanted to rebel, she screamed within her head. He wants to rebel... He's going to rebel against you, my Lord...

_I need to stop talking to him,_ she thought and knew that she didn't have a choice. Dende was the key. He couldn't be abandoned.

But oh god, the pain....

------

Meh. Those OC drama-queens, eh? Review, please. Pleeeeaaaaassssse.


	9. The Retention of Vital Organs

Chapter Four

The Retention of Vital Organs

--

The fight- the spar, really, but it took a heavy toll on Vegeta and _felt_ like a real fight- lasted a long time, measurable at least in hours, until breath was hard to come by and bruises throbbed with pain along his arms. It lasted much longer than any spar he'd ever had with Ky'ale, at least since he was fifteen. Three burns, shimmering with the track of beams of light energy, glittered black on his left shoulder, left arm, and along the lower portion of his right leg, where the spandex training outfit had torn and exposed the skin beneath. Every muscle in his body pulsed and twinged with exertion and pain. He'd gotten five similar wounds on Kakarotto- most of the younger saiyan's shirt had been torn off even through the armor and had made him a good deal more vulnerable- but Kakarotto's count for normal hits was much higher and he didn't seem as tired as Vegeta was. The prince knew he was going to lose. He knew he didn't have a chance of winning. And somehow, that didn't bother him.

Well, it bothered him. But not as much as he'd thought it would. He'd have been _bothered_ if Goku had let him win, but that both were giving it their all and the fight was lasting this long was anything but disturbing and was, in its own way, deeply satisfying. _So this is what being challenged feels like. Brings back memories, doesn't it, Kakarotto?_ He could see it in the other saiyan's eyes. Oh, hell yes; they both remembered well enough.

_Vegeta spun, the pointed tip of his boot burying in where Kakarotto most certainly did _not_ want the pointed tip of anyone's boot going. He gasped and cried out in pain, a small amount of blood spouting from his mouth. Vegeta wasn't as easy as Nappa had been. Nappa had been a matter of seconds. Vegeta... well, Vegeta was a prince. He was quite a bit more. _

_The two circled each other, Goku shoving the excruciating pain down to a mild throbbing by force of will alone. Until that moment, he'd been having fun with the prince. Training with the Kai had been fun but King Kai hadn't fought all-out like this and it had been as much instruction for personal meditation and training as much as physical fighting. And Vegeta had a certain pattern, a certain way of fighting that he hadn't ever seen before but that flowed perfectly with his own. _

Raditz would have had it, too, if he hadn't beaten the shit out of Piccolo and I before we could fight_. He'd known that with singular clarity and the insight startled him. _Nappa... well, Nappa probably wouldn't have. He was more used to the style of fighting where he either bludgeoned and bullied someone to death or was bludgeoned or bullied himself. _Vegeta had it, though, and their almost-matched powers kept the dance going and going on. _

_But Vegeta hadn't died and trained with gods. So he wasn't going to win...._

The Prince of all Saiyans forced himself forward, whirling around and throwing his foot up, aiming for an area a little higher this time. Kakarotto or anyone, when sparring he didn't aim there. Except that one time in the beginning of this spar. He'd still been worried the younger man was going to let him win.

Like Ky'ale had done, Goku went limp and simply let himself be shot backwards. He somersaulted over in midair and held his hands braced in front of his chest, the palms glowing with yellow light, and Vegeta barely managed to block it with his right arm. The spandex near the elbow burned off with a slightly- distasteful smell. Another shiny burn, another silently counted point for Kakarotto. Vegeta snarled and grudged him of it but deeper inside and more primal, he congratulated him. It was a good move and it kept him from taking the full force of the kick while setting him up for the shot. Now both of their breathing came in ragged gasps but Vegeta sure as hell wasn't going to give up and neither was Kakarotto. Kakarotto was winning anyway and giving up would cause a rather sudden decline in Vegeta's opinion of him.

It was rather hot in the GR; the flourescent lights were designed to give off a minimal of heat, which was what caused with rather poor lighting, but with the confined space and so much of it taken up with exerted and sweating bodies, and, on another level, the constant whir of electricity needed to keep up such a dangerously high level of gravity always giving off its own heat, the place still warmed fast and once the metal got hot it stayed hot. The whole place was stifling. Vegeta could barely breathe, and had to force himself to keep moving. The air seemed mostly carbon dioxide. He locked his eyes onto his opponent and forced himself to keep from thinking about anything but the next opening. Which was difficult, with the younger saiyan's shirt completely gone and his own breathing ragged, the rise and fall of his chest irregular, the dim lights dulling the contrasts between the rope-like muscle beneath the skin...

_No. No. These are.... self-destructive thoughts. They aren't mine. _They weren't. They couldn't be. He, after all, was hidden behind a wall of ice and there was nothing that could penetrate beyond it. He had been spending too much time with humans, that was it. Humans got emotional over everything, they emoted everywhere and all over everything they touched. _I won't let it affect me like it affects them. I am _not_ human. I am _not_ weak._

But it was so difficult to keep up the walls when he was so tired and everything around him reminded him of things he refused to think of; the scent of the younger man hanging in the air, the sound of air whispering in and out irregularly from tired lungs, the taste of salt in the air, the constant feel of skin under his hands, the rise and fall of bruised and bared chest.... _No._

_I will not think about this. I will _not. _I feel nothing for Kakarotto, he will not touch my emotions and he will _not _weaken me. I wouldn't be affected if he had died before we had started this, I wouldn't think twice about it and I would be going along the same course as I am now. _Maybe once that would have worked. Maybe _yesterday_ that would have worked. Vegeta's heart- another uncomfortable reminder that he retained one- hammered uncomfortably in his throat. It felt like he had swallowed something still alive.

_Ky'ale yawned, perching on the edge of Vegeta's bed. He raised one dark eyebrow at her. "You would have gotten more sleep if you had come with me when I left Bulma, Ky'ale," he told her, quietly, and she cocked her head at him and raised and let fall her shoulders. "She was leaving something unsaid. I wanted to know what." _

_"And what was it?" He'd gotten the same impression from the blue-haired harpy. He vaguely regretted throwing her little toy across the room but she had provoked it. Why would they need a power-sensor, anyway? "Ky'ale?"_

_The cat looked a little disturbed, and she was studying him with a golden intensity that bothered him slightly. He had never really considered that she could hear his thoughts with only slightly more effort than her own- he could, after all, do the same to her; they were bonded closer than any one-way bond could bring- in any way disturbing, but now he felt a little uncomfortable, as though his thoughts were being scanned and judged. With an automatic intensity that surprised him- he'd never done it before, after all, but he supposed it was born of constant paranoia- he shifted the ice-shields a little bit so that they severed the link between he and the cat. Ky'ale's eyes widened slightly but she gave no other sign that anything had happened. What Vegeta wanted to do wasn't questioned. It was safer to keep one's muzzle shut._

_Even without the link, Vegeta would have known if she had lied. So saying "nothing" was out of the question. "She wanted to know why you hated Kakarotto." It was impossible to get the inarticulate thought Bulma had impressed out of a feline mouth and now she couldn't simply send it to her prince. The literal translation would have to do. "Why you wanted to beat him so badly."_

_A slightly pale tinging to Vegeta's knuckles was the only indication of Vegeta's anger. His hands had already been fisted; Ky'ale had kept them in balls the whole fight with rather feral offense that had kept the saiyan on- metaphorically- his toes, and the joints were sore enough that it hurt to stretch out the fingers for any amount of time. "Did she?"_

_"Yes. I told her that it was just that you hated him, that it's because he is Kakarotto and you are Vegeta." If there was anything wrong with the answer she would know but Vegeta gave little reaction. "She didn't really listen, I don't think. She... she kept hesitating... Krillin says she's in love with you but I really don't think she is." The confused tone only darkened to a snarl on the human's name so Vegeta doubted that Ky'ale's opinion was really affected too much by her hatred of the person who countered it. He approved of the opinion almost as much as the antiphony. Ky'ale should hate Krillin._

_And as for Bulma... he refused to even think about that word- as for Bulma thinking more than twice about him, he doubted as much. He trusted Ky'ale's opinion and insight much more than Krillin's. She could see things that humans were completely blind to with her golden eyes, not to mention prod through people's minds better than anyone he knew. So why Bulma's sudden intrusion to matters that weren't any of her concern?_

_Why did he hate Kakarotto? The sudden, spontaneous smile jumped uninvited to his mind and his knuckles turned a little whiter. He hated him for every reason in the world. He hated him because he was always stronger without half the right Vegeta had to it. He hated him because..._

_Because he was Kakarotto and the other Vegeta, and he hated him. It was the way the world worked._

Vegeta forced his mind to only work in patterns of blocking and hitting and dodging and moving and the constant flow of fighting that he could force himself to become. Everything was pattern and there was no room for anything other in his mind, anything aside from the constant flow. He moved as his body dictated and his mind had been rendered only to what reflexes burned behind black eyes. His muscles screamed in protest but he ignored them, his mind rotated in endless circles of stewing thought but he ignored it, his whole body burned for more reasons than he wished to count and he concentrated on the pain and on the constant motion of every little muscle.

Breathing became a task of choice; will you use this second of freedom from engagement to break into an attack or to draw in air? And every second he flowed in the endless dance and felt his walls crumbling he undertook the now-familiar task of converting the whatever-it-was into anger at Kakarotto fueled by the pain of bruises decorating his body. Anger was familiar. Anger was safe. It burned with ice-cold intensity through his veins until it moved him almost alone. _Why do I hate him? Why do I hate Kakarotto? I hate him because he's retained everything I gave up, I hate him because he still has enough personality to offer charity and enough security to welcome enemies into his house and yet he's still. Fucking. Stronger. Than. Me._

Kakarotto flew at him, a solid punch missing Vegeta's ear by inches and Kakarotto himself was somewhat unbalanced by the failed strike. Vegeta planted a knee in his stomach with more force than the younger saiyan would use against him and gripped the other man's shoulders in long-fingered hands.

_I gave everything up! I gave everything up for the strength he obtained without effort! Without even trying! Without sacrifice, he excelled beyond the limits of any saiyan in recorded history!_

Goku tried to kick at Vegeta, trying to land a foot in his stomach or chest, but the prince's knees blocked his body with automatic movement that responded every time he tried. The smaller man propelled both of them toward the edge of the GR and Kakarotto slammed backwards into the sloped metal wall, the air knocked out of him. He gasped, the heat of the metal soaking into his bare back, hard and warm against his skin, like the iron-locked fingers wrapped around his shoulders and the knee pressed, unmoving, against his thigh. It would have hurt if he had been paying attention, but Vegeta's black eyes were locked onto him with the cold intensity of liquid nitrogen, with something burning behind them, burning and burning and making the black almost gleam silver in the dim light of the GR. Goku's stomach was lodged somewhere in his throat. It was hard to breathe around it but he couldn't swallow it down. His tongue was lead and he couldn't have said anything if there had been anything to say as the moment stretched on and on. His heart was hammering in his chest so loudly he was amazed Vegeta didn't tear it out to shut it up.

The prince's face was very close to his own and the fire behind the ice in his eyes seemed brighter than Goku had ever seen it. Like all of the similar moments they'd had, he seemed as trapped as Goku in the eye contact, the unmovable force that locked them holding them in place. His face was _very_ close. Warm breath alighted Goku's jawbone and the side of his neck, and Vegeta's lips moved quietly with breathing not two inches from Goku's own...

_Bulma showed him the crumpled metal and glowered darkly at him. "He threw it across the room," she pouted, thin blue eyebrows drawn completely down. Puar, who had come to visit Bulma while Yamcha poked around town- after their latest fling, Bulma and Yamcha didn't see much of each other, it was part of their own pattern, which wasn't completely unlike the flow of fighting- looked over her shoulder and cocked her broad-faced head. "I thought he hadn't damaged it a lot," she said, quietly, staring at the obviously-ruined bit of scrap metal in Bulma's hand. "And wouldn't it have more to it than just metal and handfuls of wire? And why are parts of it melted, almost like someone took a piece of scrap metal and copper wire and fused them all into a crumpled mess with tools and a blowtorch to frame someone who didn't actually cause any damage?"_

_The thrown fake power-scan missed Puar's face by inches. _

_"That's not the point, anyway, Goku," she said imploringly, meeting his dark eyes with her wide, blue ones. "How much he damages isn't the point, I could make another one anyway. The point is, he's violent and destructive and if I have to clean up another one of Ky'ale's 'accidents' I'm going to scream."_

_"She says if you make her a litter box," Goku began, but he hadn't actually held any hope for that one._

_"Yeah," Bulma sneered, "make a litter box for a kitty the size of a great dane. Have you seen how much that bitch shits, Goku? There's more room for her over where you live, and there's more stuff for Vegeta to break there that isn't... mine."_

_Goku sighed. He'd explained this to her when he'd first talked her into housing the saiyan and his bodyguard but he hadn't suspected she'd listened. He had the oddest feeling that she had agreed to take in the saiyan because she'd thought him attractive; an attitude, doubtless, that had been destroyed the more she got to know him. "I wouldn't mind, myself," he said, which was of course a lie. Living with Vegeta would not be fun for either of them, not the way things were working. "But we have to consider Gohan. He's getting enough bad influence as far as profanity and violence go without Vegeta and Ky'ale's help. And of course, there's Chichi." He would never admit it, not even to himself (especially not to himself) but this was the first time in almost a year he'd actually been happy he was married to Chichi when they weren't actually having sex. Which had been getting a great deal less frequent lately and was never... precisely often. "She hates Vegeta and absolutely.... really hates Ky'ale."_

_"Abhors. Detests." Bulma's attempts to expand Goku's vocabulary were never successful. If he knew more words than he used it never did him much good; he talked in a genial way that left little room for error. She sighed but it wasn't about the saiyan's word choices. "Why Ky'ale, so much? I mean, no one trusts her..." No one but you, at least, "but why her more than Vegeta?"_

_Goku shrugged. "She doesn't like how Ky'ale lets Vegeta use her," he said, truthfully, hiding his glee that she had apparently accepted another few months with Vegeta and his bodyguard. "That she doesn't stand up for herself against him."_

_Bulma mimicked the saiyan's shrug and sighed, waving at Puar to keep her from getting into the brown paper bags of groceries Goku had helped her carry home. The floating shapeshifter grinned and made off somewhere else. "It's not Ky'ale I worry about," she said quietly. "It's Vegeta. He's... dangerous, you know? I mean, he's strong, determined, almost fearless, completely insane and absolutely beautiful." The last two words hit like electrically-charged spears in Goku's chest. "That's not a combination I feel- Puar! Grocery bags don't move on their own! Get out of there!"_

_How did Bulma know that Vegeta was beautiful? She'd never even seen him fight... Outside of battle he just looked like another short aristocrat with an arrogant face; you didn't see who he actually was unless you saw him in battle...._

_"Well," Bulma amended, returning to the quiet voice she'd used earlier, "not beautiful, maybe, not in the traditional way, but he's pretty far from ugly and he moves in a rather graceful way..." The voice she used was devoid of emotion. Goku lacked the insight to realize she was testing him. "Anyway, he's not safe, and it makes me uncomfortable. He'd be a powerful man, if the planet Vegeta was still whole and he could become King there. He'd make a powerful prince."_

_"Yeah, he would," Goku murmured, unable to shake the images Bulma's description called up and unable to identify, then, why it was so hard to clear them from his mind's eye. _

_"I suppose, however," Bulma said, even more quietly, "that one cannot underestimate Ky'ale, either. After all, it's in the name, isn't it?"_

_Goku frowned. Ky'ale had once told him that her name meant 'golden' in the language of the kairn but as apt as it was to her he didn't see how it helped gather respect for her from anyone who didn't favor the color._

_Bulma sighed. "Kairn, Goku. The Kai are gods, aren't they? I don't know what the 'r n' are at the end of the word; they could mean 'children of the Gods' or 'God-forsaken' or anything else for that matter, but generally a name involving the word 'god' has to have some relevance." she shrugged, then snatched an apple off the table and threw it into the air. Puar popped out of the false shape and obligingly left the room. "Just food for thought." She'd grinned at her own pun._

_It was a good thought, actually... But Goku couldn't figure it out, and he couldn't bring himself to ask Ky'ale. She didn't show it but he felt she took the devastation of the kairn harder than Vegeta took the death of his own species. Maybe it was just that she'd had more room for hope than he._

Goku could almost hear Ky'ale telling him, whispering to him to kiss the older saiyan who held him pinned against the wall and had frozen with his eyes locked on the other's and his breath lighting fire along the skin of Goku's neck. He could almost hear her sardonic voice in his mind- _If you love him, kiss him. He feels the same way for you, you know._ It wasn't real, but he checked to be sure; it sounded almost plausibly Ky'ale and he was almost surprised that the imitation had come from his own mind. _If you love him, show him._ It made more sense than his own thoughts did so he had assumed it had come from her.

He wished he could see beyond the ice in Vegeta's eyes. Oh, lord, how he wished it; _do you feel the same way? Do you want it, too, Vegeta?_ He wanted to kiss him, but he knew that it would only ruin whatever tentative friendship he had managed to tender with the sparring and he didn't want to lose what little he had. His mouth was inches from Vegeta's. He could have done it, he could have broken the uncomfortable weight that crushed them both every time their eyes met.

He could have. He could have kissed him.

No. _No._ No, he couldn't have. Vegeta was a prince, and a man, and Goku was a married man with a son and there was too much distance between them. It was hopeless, it was impossible, and as someone who had lived most of his life off hope instead of pride Goku felt the lack crush him and felt his breath quaver in his throat. His voice shook as an exhalation turned into speech he couldn't stop. "Vegeta." The word was so soft he could barely hear it and shook with every bit of emotion Goku was feeling, with every slight desire and the looming omnipresence of _can't._ Not even the Prince of all Saiyans could have denied the emotions in the tone, not even he could miss them.

But the word was spoken so quietly Vegeta didn't even hear it. Goku drew in breath and forced down the frantic tattoo of his own heartbeat, the irregularity of his breath. "Vegeta?" The word was spoken stronger but there was none of the expressiveness within the voice that spoke it.

Vegeta stood, frozen in time, locked in the younger man's eyes. He couldn't move. He couldn't think, not beyond the sudden clarity of every shoved-aside thought and every ignored feeling that suddenly flared up like fire inside his mind and chest. His stomach was twisting, and it made him feel limp, like a piece of wet cloth wrung dry. His mouth opened but no sound left it. The sound of Kakarotto's breathing was loud in his ears. It took every bit of will he had ever owned to keep the walls maintained and he could feel them weakening.

_Oh, god. I do want it..._ He tried to deny it but there was no point any more. He tried to see through Goku's eyes to see what he wanted but he'd never been good at reading other people's faces and knew what he would see in there anyway. Kakarotto was married, had a son, lived rather happily on earth with his human friends and there was no way he wanted what Vegeta wanted, no way he was so desperate for something to call his own.... _Oh, gods. This can't be happening... Why is this happening...? Why to me?_

He saw Kakarotto's mouth move in a pattern dissimilar to breathing and heard a whisper in his ear, and it drew him back to the moment with a snap. The dark eyes of the younger man were still locked into his own with a disconcertable emotion showing through. "Vegeta?" he asked again, and his voice was devoid of any feeling. Vegeta felt a brick lodge itself in his abdomen where just a moment ago his stomach dwelled. _Nothing. You knew he felt nothing, you knew it, you knew he didn't care about you any more than any of the others; less, you're the one no one trusts._ That wouldn't have bothered him a month ago. That wouldn't have bothered him the day before yesterday. This was all happening much too fast...

Now Vegeta broke the eye contact and enraged by his own display of weakness- how could he get so swiftly hypnotized by the younger man; how could he just stand there, wearing himself on his sleeves, waiting to be mocked and belittled? How could he be so stupid? He'd ruined everything and he directed the anger with pinpoint accuracy as he threw himself backwards and slammed the hard side of his boot into the side of Kakarotto's face.

_I hope that hurt, you low-bred shit. I will not waste time and energy giving a damn about you._ But he knew it was false bravado and it hurt to acknowledge it. _Damn._

Goku rubbed the side of his jaw and grinned with spontaneous glee. He understood fighting. He didn't understand the bleeding turmoil in his gut but he understood the challenge in Vegeta's movements and felt it would be easier to predict whether the prince was going to punch his jaw or knee his groin than try and detect any emotion in the fine-boned face. He drew back, throwing his own punch and feeling the upper part of the prince's boot slam with breathtaking force into his side. He cursed under his breath, a little disgruntled as he realized how often he'd been using profanity lately. He snatched wildly, felt his hand close around the other saiyan's wrist, and felt himself being flipped over Vegeta's head. He brought his knee down as he was being thrown and caught the prince's eye, getting leverage on his shoulder and propelling himself away from the older saiyan.

Then he grinned, braced both hands in front of his chest, and ended the battle in a wave of white energy. The Kamehameha wave was always his favorite finishing move.

Goku didn't want to bother Ky'ale- Vegeta said she would still be drying off from her own regen- so he tossed the prince a sensu bean and ate one himself, poking through the bag. They only had three left- no one had been expecting Frieza's attack so no one had asked for any before they had left- but as he himself said when asked with a shrug, if they needed too many in the battle it was because they didn't stand a chance anyway. Vegeta had shrugged and only agreed, chewing up the hard bean with a minimum of interest. He collapsed bonelessly into the couch Goku was sleeping on and seemed ready to read silently to himself until Ky'ale was ready to go to bed. After all, Ky'ale insisted on sleeping on the floor next to her prince and she couldn't open or close the door on her own. Goku couldn't read any of the foreign writing of the books and the magazines had ceased to interest him, so he only got some water and watched Vegeta. He knew he was torturing himself but he couldn't help it.

Finishing, he put the glass in the sink with the other unwashed dishes- which happened to be _all_ the dishes- and walked back towards his make-do bed and the saiyan prince. He had meant to sit down beside Vegeta but found himself moving, almost unconsciously, almost controlled by the aura of 'respect me or die trying' around the older saiyan, to sit to his right on the floor, his head beneath the prince's, leaning against the couch front. Vegeta glanced down at him, vaguely surprised.

_He'd make a powerful prince..._

Goku sighed into the silence and heard the rustle of paper as Vegeta put the book aside. He tried for a way to articulate the question that haunted him with ghostly claws, head lain limply on the couch's cushion. "Vegeta," he began, hesitantly; "can saiyans fall in love?"

_Don't look at him,_ a voice within Vegeta's head said strictly, and he had no intention of disobeying it. _If you look at him, he'll know..._ "No," he replied, almost automatically. "We're a race of warriors. We don't weaken ourselves with things like that." It seemed hollower, weaker than it usually did, when he'd said it to the thick-headed saiyan or repeated it to himself.

Goku sighed, a little hurt by Vegeta's answer. But it wasn't because of that he'd asked it. Well, not directly. "I had thought... I thought, I did love her," he said, quietly, and the absurdity of confessing this all to _Vegeta_ hardly even occurred to him. "I just knew... I knew that in all the stories, the woman loves the man and he loves her back and that's how it all ends happily after ever. Right? God, it seems so weak now, but I figured just because... because she loved me, I loved her, too."

"You couldn't." Even if he had lied then- days ago, Vegeta would have believed every word of what he had said- he was telling the truth, now. "You are a warrior. She isn't." _Keep your voice neutral, Vegeta._ "Even female saiyans are warriors."

"They are?" That, Goku hadn't known. He'd always figured saiyans looked down on the females of their species by the way Vegeta looked down on human women.

"Yes. It's pathetic, how dependant your woman is." He chose to ignore Kakarotto's glare. "Females are warriors and can relate to the males. They need to." _Why, Vegeta? Saiyans can't fall in love..._ He amended quickly, "Breeding pairs must be able to understand each other."

Goku only nodded. "I had really thought I'd loved her," he whispered, as if pleading to someone Vegeta couldn't see. "I really did. Gohan..." He seemed to expect some reply but Vegeta couldn't think of one, snide or otherwise. They sat in silence for some time.

It had been a long time since Vegeta had meditated but the silent, low-strung atmosphere seemed perfect for it. The spar had released a lot of tension- more, even, than it had created- and Vegeta found himself sliding easily into the state between sleep and waking that was second-nature to him by now. Mental balance had been stressed on, in his training. Apparently they feared him going insane....

Goku stayed silent as Vegeta moved effortlessly from waking to meditation, his eyes sliding half-closed and unseeing, his mind spreading in ways Goku could almost see. He had seen Master Roshi and Piccolo meditate and had come to the conclusion that some things were universal. But neither the human nor the Namic had looked quite so entrancing while they meditated; Vegeta looked almost helpless, despite the aura of strength and steel that still hovered about him, and his fine-boned face was drawn but looked much younger with the coldness cleared. Goku felt a smile play at his lips and didn't try to stop himself as he inched a little closer, sitting directly in front of Vegeta. He watched him for another moment then stared out the small, round window to the universe beyond them. It went on forever. Earth was one little light in the sky, now; at least, that's what Ky'ale said. She said they had passed one and a half lightyears from earth, and so it looked in the sky like it still existed although it didn't. Goku grasped the concept but it still baffled him how they were moving so quickly and seemed to get no where fast. And shouldn't the stars be blurring as they shot past them? Ky'ale said that things at such a distance didn't appear to move past the peripheral vision of moving objects at the same speed as things up close and most of the stars were light years away but he still didn't really understand. She had truly confused him when she'd said that if they were on a planet a similar size and distance from the sun as earth seven days would have passed since the destruction of his home, not four. Objects in motion, she'd said, are less effected by time than those standing still. He hadn't attempted to understand.

He'd sighed and glanced back to see if Vegeta had been disturbed by him. His face hadn't changed. _Ky'ale understands me less than Chichi,_ he thought, leaning back to brace his back against the saiyan prince's knees. _But Ky'ale.... doesn't really understand anyone but Vegeta. And maybe Gohan._ He leaned back and stiffened as he realized his head was currently resting on the portion of Vegeta's thighs that would have been considered his lap if it belonged to anyone but Vegeta and held anything but Goku's head. His shoulders prickled with his own daring. _I'll move before he wakes up,_ he decided, because it was a very comforting place to lie. He could hear the sounds of Vegeta's breathing and feel the slight tensing and relaxing of his leg muscles as they moved with his lungs and pushed blood up towards his heart. The metal of the ceiling glittered with lights but they were dim fluorescent not unlike what lit the GR and he found them not entirely intruding when he closed his eyes. The sparring had been difficult and he was wiped out. He bit his lip, half-heartedly, trying to work up the energy to move before falling asleep. He failed.

--

Vegeta had spent a long time in meditation. He was dimly aware it had been a long, long time and it was probably time to go to sleep. Despite the relaxation of meditation his body was craving the release of true sleep and the desire pulled him into full waking after a number of hours.

The first thing he was aware of was that he was not alone. A heavy weight on his lap and a soft breathing into his right arm assured him of that, and when he opened his eyes to the dim flourescent lights he saw who his company included- Ky'ale, curled up next to him on the couch, and Goku, leaning back on his knees, head resting on his thighs. Vegeta froze, cold fingers playing up his spine. He didn't know what game Goku was playing but if he was taunting the prince for whatever he had seen on his face in the GR he would kill him...

_Don't be stupid. This is Goku. He rips himself open and shows you everything he feels on a daily basis, whether you want it or not. He's not subtly mocking you. _It made sense. But Vegeta still wasn't going to stand for it; he wasn't Goku and he didn't let things like this... he didn't.... he wasn't going to let Goku sleep with his head in his _lap,_ looking up at him like he was in the grip of something so horrible it defied the term "nightmare." What was it Kakarotto dreamed about, anyway, that always made him look so bloody damn _sad_ when he slept?

The slow, subtle motions on Kakarotto's mouth with even breathing broke for one moment as the lips mouthed silently a slow string of protests and then the single word, "Gohan." Vegeta's hand froze in midair where it was poised, ready to shove the younger man's head onto the floor where it belonged.

He remembered the look of pure, intense pain that had haunted Goku the moment they had entered the ship, the ghost of grief and sorrow that returned whenever he wasn't training or being forcedly cheerful or trying, without any success, to help Ky'ale cook. The way he pushed the grief out of the way every time he offered a dredged-up smile in response to Vegeta's anger. But mostly, he remembered the look on Kakarotto's face when his home, his wife, and most important of all, his _son_, exploded in a flash of light.

Remembered the dry, feral rage that was so very contagious, remembered the grief that lurked beneath it, the human sorrow behind the saiyan mask that dominated Goku's face. If he had killed Frieza, Vegeta knew with disconcerting guilt, Kakarotto would have buried the emperor's body. He would have mourned his own son's murderer because he would have wished Gohan back and realized there was no one else willing to pay respect. And yet, the lowly-bred saiyan was facing more pain that any Vegeta had ever seen....

_There is nothing worse to watch than the death of your own children._ That had come from one of Vegeta's old tutors. He'd scorned the man and regarded him as worthless and when he was executed the young saiyan had been sadistically glad and relieved that he would have another sensei. He couldn't remember the charges but knew why Frieza had killed the man- the emperor didn't like the people under his rule to be emotional. He didn't like emotions in general. He had killed Gohan without thinking twice about pain or death or mourning; had killed each and every one of them without caring. Had he been able to, Vegeta would have done the same thing at the exact same time, without caring. A month ago, that would have been perfectly acceptable.

He glared down at the sorrow-choked face and scowled, angry that he had been so basely and completely changed, angry that one man had done it and with only his grief and his stupid, unfounded hope. And angry that he sat with his hand held at Kakarotto's forehead and didn't move it to push Goku off his lap.

Angry, perhaps most of all, because he wanted to find some way to erase the grief and the desire frightened him. He so very much wanted not to care... And somehow he had the strangest intuition that he _was_ making it better and his arm slowly relaxed- a hair, a muscle, completely, and drifted back down to his side. _God damn it._

He glanced over at Ky'ale. Doubtless, she had come in and stayed on the couch with the sincere hope of being there when Vegeta awoke to find his space so severely violated. He resisted the urge to pet her, shaking his head. _Sorry, cat._

He intended to pretend he had slipped from meditation to sleep without waking in between. It was the safest course he could think of when he'd looked down at the grief-choked face and let his arm relax. He decided to let it stand. As it was, they both needed the break.

----

E/N: Yes, PH has come off hiatus! Yay! Thanks to the review of someone whose penname I forget! I'll finish Part Two even if I don't get any more reveiws and I'll probably go ahead and wrap up the story but please remember that I need feedback or really its like no one's reading this at all, so why bother publishing it?

-pout- Anywho, this chapter's a little melodramatic in my opinion but I do so love melodrama. And a little tweak of almost-fluff at the end never hurt anyone.


	10. Improving Team Morale

Chapter Five

Improving Team Morale

Ky'ale regarded the pointed ends of one curled talon with meticulous eye and swiped up the last drop of viscous green regen liquid with her tongue. She had been using that tank quite a bit, that day; between Vegeta and Goku in their decisively vicious every-man-and-cat-for-oneself fights (or brawls, one could call them) she was getting completely mowed over.

_I suppose I'm getting complacent,_ she thought, chewing on the over-long claw of the same talon, a little worriedly. _I haven't been anywhere near Vegeta's power in years, and that can't all be blamed on the fact that I'm kairn and he's saiyan. I'm not even as strong as Piccolo and even Gohan's catching up on me._

The day had held quite a few questions for Ky'ale and she hadn't had the opportunity to ask a single one. And they most certainly weren't answering themselves. For one thing, when she woke up, Kakarotto had already awoken and Vegeta was still asleep, which meant she was robbed of the entertainment the prince's reaction to Goku's closeness would bring. She had missed the younger saiyan's reaction to finding he was sleeping in the position, and Vegeta had meditated and slept through the whole thing. Disappointing. And had finding them the night before not raised enough questions, certainly Vegeta and Kakarotto's new standing with one another had. Ky'ale was not innocent, but she _was_ the last of her species and the last eligible male of her kin had died when she was still three years from sexual maturity. It never occurred to her that the posturing and constant struggle between Vegeta and Kakarotto was related in any way to mating. Vegeta had never bothered to impress anyone before, or worried about rejection; as far as she could tell, when he found someone resembling a saiyan female he simply requested- or, depending on circumstance, demanded- her presense at a convenient time in a convenient place and it was done. The kairn bodyguard had little grasp of romance or the acts people put on to impress and see through each other. So she simply didn't understand all that was happening right in front of her.

Take the morning before, for example. She was cooking breakfast and Goku came in to ask if he could help, which was all normal. Despite everything she still cooked better than both men but her lack of opposable thumbs always presented something of a problem and a pair of willing hands were always to the good. What was not normal was that Vegeta watched the whole time; didn't fiddle with controls or disappear to train, but only sat and watched, his expression trained clear. Ky'ale tried but the sheilds blocked her out, too, and she couldn't get beyond them to touch the workings of the saiyan prince's mind. While they ate both saiyans ate, in comparison to their normal gorging, surprisingly little. Enough, at least, was left over that it was worth it to put it away for later. The kairn was amazed but hadn't truly been confused until they started training.

They had decided to make it a three-person all-out battle, but Ky'ale had the distinct impression that she was only included for propriety. And while she still got enough of the fighting to last her all the time in the world, she also got the distinct impression that Goku and Vegeta were keeping their eyes mainly on each other.

_Gods, I've never seen either of them like this. Well, maybe Vegeta, right after Goku beat him that first time and he went insane. But never Goku. They really held nothing back, especially not from one another. _And it had all held the aura of something personal between them, something each understood and neither knew the other comprehended. Ky'ale felt slightly left out and was well aware how absurd that was. She didn't care. It still hurt to be blocked out, completely and utterly severed from Vegeta's mind.

After a few hours they regenerated and returned to the fighting, and then Ky'ale broke off and returned to the regen tank and came to curl up in the kitchen and talk to Dende. Which was just as depressing as always. _When one is confused and disappointed and depressed, captured and tortured children do not make for a quick pick-me-up. _With a sigh, she gave the claw a final chew and waved her tail slowly back and forth.

"Hiya, Ky'ale." The voice brought no reaction but Ky'ale's ear slowly turning towards the sound. She wondered, very much so, what had brought out Goku's desperation in his sparring with Vegeta. Just proving that he wasn't going to let Vegeta lose? Unlikely. Trying to train for a better chance at bringing his son back? That seemed right, but somehow she couldn't shake off the intuition that it was more. She remembered once a tutor telling her that every mortal's face flashed through nauces of expression before settling on their masks and the unconcious detection of these slight and brief expressions made up a great deal of intuition. _A bodyguard should always trust intuition,_ he'd told her. _These nauces will tell you a hell of a lot more about a person than their normal expressions. You want to know more than they want you to know. And you'll be trusting a lot more of weaker cruches than the unconcious mind._

"Hello, Kakarotto." Ky'ale rose and cocked her head at the young saiyan. Kakarotto grinned at her, pleased that she, at least, acknowleged him with a little friendliness. He wanted very much to run his fingers through her very soft, golden fur but not only did it bother him, the thought of _petting_ a sentient being as though she were a pet housecat, but she obviously didn't like people she didn't trust touching her, as she'd proved on numerous occasions. She trusted, really, only Vegeta enough for scritches, but allowed those offered by Gohan because she really didn't have a choice. "Have you already had enough of letting Vegeta pound your head in?"

Both of them had seen the sparring hurt Vegeta a great deal more than Goku. Both of them had seen Vegeta's self-hatred grow in his face and it had worried both of them but neither went any more easy on the prince. "No," the younger man answered genially. "Actually, I didn't. But Vegeta'd had enough and wanted to train alone." Ky'ale had no doubt that the prince had phrased it a great deal less politely than that and the faint, almost-covered hurt in Goku's voice testified to as much.

Ky'ale blinked slowly at him. "Did you have fun, sparring with him last night? I missed that."

Goku paused, wondering exactly what he should tell the cat. That he'd been confronted with the fact that he was developing suffocating and questionable feelings for the Prince of all Saiyans and had ended up telling Vegeta his life's complications before falling asleep with his head in the other man's lap? It would have been funny, almost, if it hadn't been despairingly sad.

_Chichi. Gods, I'm so sorry, Chichi.... I tried to make it work for you. Can't you see that all those years were just for you? Gohan... How can I make it right for you? There's no way._

There was no way he could tell Ky'ale just how much fun the sparring at been- both sarcastically and literally, in a warped sense- so he blurted out the first words that came to his mouth. "I don't love my wife anymore," he told her.

She looked up in surprise at the unexpected comment. "Pardon?"

"Sorry. I... I talked to Vegeta last night, though. He said saiyans couldn't fall in love, so I guess I'm not to blame, but it hurts. I don't love her anymore. I can't remember ever really loving her, and I can't tell her that, because we have a son and there's nothing I can do."

The kairn was a little bowled over by the sudden confession and wondered what the hell sage advice Goku was expecting from her. "How long have you no longer loved her?" was the only responce she could think of making, and it sounded shockingly hypocritical. "Why are you asking-"

"At least... at least a year. Maybe more. I don't know if I ever loved her." He sighed. "I'm sorry to come to you, Ky'ale, but I know Vegeta doesn't have any answers and I'm not going to ask Frieza and I can't exactly run off-course to find a romantic advice council center on another planet somewhere."

"There aren't many species in the universe with the human view on monogamous sexual relationships, anyway," Ky'ale responded, her mind running in circles. She didn't know why she was giving relationship advice to the human-minded saiyan that was her prince's rival but she was and she supposed it was reason enough. After a moment of silence, she supposed to screw all thoughts of romance and give advice on what she did understand. "She's your friend, Kakarotto?"

"Yes. But that's all, I think. She died and I felt more grief for Krillin than for her. I felt more grief for Bulma than for her. She's just a friend to me, like Bulma and Krillin and Roshi and everyone else." His voice grew a little more sardonic and Ky'ale, who hadn't ever expected to hear the tone out of Kakarotto's mouth, pressed one ear forward and the other backward in an uncanny and alien imitation of Vegeta's single raised eyebrow. "Do you know what they call have in common, Ky'ale? They all completely depend on me. When shit happens, they all count on the fact that Goku will appear and everything will be made better again. When Frieza came, they all expected me to make everything work, they all watched Gohan die and thought, 'Well, it'll all be okay, Goku will get all angry and emotional and Frieza won't stand a chance. And then they all died. And they found out I was still alive and they probably are thinking even now, 'It's alright. Goku will get the Dragonballs and wish us back and everything'll be okay'. And maybe it will, but even if it does, then I'll just be leaned on again and again."

"Until you collapse." Ky'ale could understand pain just as well as Vegeta could. This kind of pain, perhaps better. Though she still fought for more, fought to foster the dependancy rather than let the dependants- or, in Ky'ale case if not Goku's, dependant, singular- fall, fought until more and more piled on her shoulders and weighed her down, fought to keep them aloft, just like Goku did.

"She's my friend. I hope she always will be." Goku sighed and the sardonic tone was gone from his voice as if it had never been. After a moment, he added, "I don't really mind all that much. I just wish... I don't know. Maybe that my wife, at least, would have lower expectations from me, or at least not such abysmally high ones, that a little push will get me to overcome all obstacles."

Ky'ale sighed, and shook her head. She really wasn't good at being counsil. "Well," she said, quietly, "I don't know a great deal about love or anything that relates to it. But I know quite a bit about lying, and as long as you're pretending to be attracted to her you are lying to her, and you've been lying to her, as far as I can see." Goku poured a glass of water as she talked. "I can't help you on whether or not it's your fault. If Vegeta was right and saiyans can't love then I suppose it's not but I suppose it's still your fault for leading her on, but I have no idea either way. That's really all I can say. Aside from, Kakarotto-" she caught him just as he was walking away, "as for failing your friends, you haven't yet. The Dragonballs still exist, you're still alive, and you've gotten this far. We haven't lost yet." It was really more of Goku's kind of thing to say than her's but he wasn't exactly saying it at the moment so she was taking liberties. Vegeta wasn't around, after all; she was allowed.

Goku smiled, and if it was faint it was at least not feigned. "I couldn't have gotten here myself, though," he pointed out, quietly. "In the condition I was in.... Ky'ale, I never would have even considered the other ship. And I wouldn't have been able to work the controls."

The cat sighed. As inspiring as all this was, she had her limits. "Then _we _have gotten this far," she said, a little dryly though she didn't necessarily dislike the general good feeling the words inspired. "Now, if we can use this stellar teamwork for just a few more days then surely the universal emporer doesn't stand a chance. Then, after that, we can all resume ripping each other to tiny, bloody shreds." She grinned, ferally. "Dibs on Krillin."

"You can have him," Goku replied with a much more serene grin. He left, picked up a foreign book he had no chance of deciphering, and settled onto the couch. Ky'ale curled up on the kitchen floor and stared at the passing stars. In the doorway to the GR, Vegeta watched the two of them, silently, his eyes glittering in the dim flourescent lights. A slight frown played on his face, and he slowly retreated back into the shadows.

Her name was Turtle, and she was a tortoise....

It had taken Tortoise the turtle almost half an hour to inch his way all the way over to the fountain where she drank, but after fifty long years of living alone with an old human pervert, it was worth every step...

Bulma, who had never had an interest in biology half so much as engineering and electronics was still amazed, watching rather captively the budding relationship between the two reptile souls. _If turtles are reptiles. They are, yes? They have scales..._ It was a pointless thought train but in Otherworld, where everything was sickeningly happy and perfect, everything was pointless. For the third time that day and the eighteenth time that week- it had been a week, right? Time didn't seem to matter much, here- she got up and paced furiously. Pacing didn't take any energy. Nothing took any energy. She ate and drank and breathed out of habit alone, finding herself no longer needing anything to maintain a constant, unchanging existance. It wasn't exactly heaven to a scientist, who knew BLOODY DAMN WELL that you can't create energy, that you have to draw it in through glucose and use water and oxygen to convert it to TDP. That you couldn't maintain your own life without air and food and water.

_I suppose I won't let it bother me. There's enough bothering me without wondering after the scientific paradoxes within Otherworld. _And while she didn't have a lot to worry about specifically and there nothing she could do about the general things, she did have quite a bit bothering her. They all did. Earth itself wandered aimlessly around Otherworld, spreading its borders out beyond what they normally were. Gohan, who had wanted to go train with King Kai when Piccolo and the others all went, sulked around or sobbed into folded arms. He wanted his father. He loved Chichi as a son can only love his mother, but he missed Goku and didn't understand why his father hadn't come.

Bulma remembered clearly the confusion once they had all- or, mostly all- found each other in Otherworld. It had been before the fighters left, as those who had been the first and last victims quickly questioned the fighters. What had happened? Where was Goku? Where was Dende? No one had expected to find Vegeta or Ky'ale in Otherworld but when it was apparent that Goku was most certainly not dead their presense in Hell was questioned, and Yemma himself had come to them to tell them that neither had passed through the gates into either Otherworld or Hell.

_I wish Ky'ale would try and talk to us,_ Bulma sighed to herself. _Jesus. If King Kai is that strong, why can't he look down on them all? They said he'd done it before; why won't he now? _Piccolo had tried to explain it to her but she hadn't understood; something about spaceships that block telepathy and the Kai's sight being limited to whom he could talk with telepathically. _How does he know Goku's in a ship, anyway? Can't he teleport? Could't he have gotten off of earth before it cumbusted?_ It didn't really matter, of course. It was idle speculation.

It had, however, always been idle speculation. Ever since she'd stopped looking for the Dragonballs with Goku years and years ago. Not a lot had changed, now she was merely contemplating her own death.

For the moment she stopped in the morbid turn of her own contemplation and turned to watch the swimming turtle and blushing tortoise. They were very cute, though she watched them move and wondered if that made mating very boring with them. Normally, she would have censored those thoughts, which not only had no point but also were somewhat perverted, but she didn't really care that much at the time. She didn't have anything else to do but think. She wondered, vaguely, if turtles and tortoises were even compatible. _I suppose they could be. Anything's possible._

And speaking of incompatible creatures having sex...

Bulma sighed and leaned back onto her palms, feeling a faint mist from the fountain alighting on the backs of her arms. _They all worried so much when Kai said it was very likely that Vegeta and Goku were traveling together to kill Frieza. He can, apprently, talk to Dende, which in my opinion, by logic, should murder Piccolo's theory, but I don't worry that much about telepathy and the abilities of demigods. And Dende can talk to Ky'ale. So we have... sort of a connection. Poor Ky'ale. I wonder if she's figured it out yet. _It must have been hard for the cat, regardless. Being surrounded by Vegeta and Goku would be hard enough even if they were only rivals, but as it was Bulma felt a deep sympathy for the cat despite the stains she'd left all over Bulma's house when the human was alive.

_They were all certain Vegeta was going to try and kill Goku and that we didn't have a snowball's chance in Hell- forgive the figure of speech- of them actually speaking to one another long enough to get the Dragonballs and bring us back to life. _Bulma could have corrected them, told them what had been going on between the two saiyans insofar as she could tell. Bulma had kept her mouth shut.

And so she didn't have the slightest fucking clue what was going on in the real world or what was even happening in Otherworld aside from two turtles- or, actually, a turtle and a tortoise- being in love and that didn't have any relevence whatsoever. Nothing here did. She was wasting away in the endless cycle of worthless contentment. _You know what could be fun? Hell. Or, you know, life._

_Goku, god damn you, hurry up and get me out of here...._

Vegeta leaned against the doorway leading from the GR and watched the younger saiyan with slightly narrowed eyes. Goku was squinting at a discarded instruction manual on vibrater effeciency and simple repair with the strange expression of someone who doesn't have the slightest clue of what they hold. The prince smothered a smile and ran long fingers through his hair, held completely upright by an unconcious flow of energy. _Clueless idiot._ He managed to keep his thoughts cold and hard in his head but he was beginning to slip in his own deception and couldn't repress the smile when it reawoke at Goku's horrified expression as he turned the page and "Figure 1-1: Uses and Positions" jumped out at him in full color, depicting a woman with purple skin and four arms demonstrating the exotic ways to use the device.

Stopping the expression with sudden ice Vegeta withdrew into the GR, but didn't start up the training machines or raise the gravity from the two-hundred-times it already was at. He stared at the computer then and merely leaned against the wall, tracing up and down bruises and cuts along his arms and shoulders. He tried, almost half-heartedly, to deny it, but he knew he couldn't. Vegeta was the dethroned King of Self-Delusion. He had tried to forget everything the sudden, impulsive grins and the deep-rooted mourning of sleep did to his innards but it was impossible; every time he managed to shove it all aside something would drag it back up. Rather like, he decided, unstoppable vomit.

_So, what?_ he asked of no one; he cried out to the saiyan gods. _So now what? You give me something to want for just because I can't have it? Isn't that an old joke by now?_ But the gods never got tired of Vegeta's pain; he could hear them laughing hysterically where ever they were. The flourescent lights flickered slightly, dimming a little; Vegeta's face fell into shadow and when it emerged it was blank once more. _So what? You want me to grovel, to put aside my pride, to try and win over someone I hate because of your sick sense of humor? Fuck the holy._ It was, after all, the basis of the saiyan system of worship.

The lights flickered again; this time, it took longer for them to come back on. Vegeta's eyes narrowed as he watched them; the gravity disappeared to nothing then lurched back, dragging him back solidly onto the metal floor. He cursed, hand braced against curved steel wall, trying to feel where his organs had ended up. They felt as though they were skewed all over his body although he knew they weren't; he caught his breath as the flourescents flashed back on. Outside, Ky'ale cursed.

"There's a black hole near here," he heard, as clearly with the sharpened senses granted by fear and foreboding as he would have had she been sitting next to him. She was talking to Goku in the living room. "It's shorting out the power. The engines'll work on electrolysis; everything else...."

What everything else was going to do, Vegeta didn't hear but he guessed. The lights started flickering erratically, some completely dark and some still fighting, while illumination came from the red-lit numbers on the GR computer that suddenly blinked "88888."

Vegeta didn't stand a chance. Like an egg hit with a sledgehammer, he was thrown to the ground, feeling as though the sudden weight would crush him. He could barely breathe. Ribs snapped under his own mass. Dimly, he heard a voice he recognized as his own hissing out what to a saiyan passed as prayer. "Amusing. Give him something to hope for, then kill him. I hope... you're all.... fucking.... happy...." He drew in breath but whatever he was going to say came out as a long, low sigh.

_Damnit. Kakarotto, this is all your fault. And I never got a fucking chance to tell you..._

Ky'ale watched the lights flicker before the sudden, crushing weight of worry and pain descended in a maelstrom of madness in her mind. (Her connection to Vegeta was too strong for even the saiyan's will to keep her entirely detached from him.) The fur along her spine and hackles rose and sudden black panic clogged her heart. _Vegeta. The GR. Dammit!_

"Kakarotto!" The word was a snap, a command. She was on her feet and already racing for the enterence to Vegeta's haven. "Vegeta! He's being crushed!"

The door was solid steel and Ky'ale's talons couldn't manipulate the doorknob. Light energy sparked around her mouth, ready to devestate half the ship, but Goku shouldered her out of the way and tore open the door. The kairn got a glimpse at his eyes and the expression there stopped her cold for about a milisecond. Then the door was open and she bounded inside-

_Crushed, beneath a weight larger than any she had ever experienced. Crushed beneath herself, weight far more than she could hold. Crushed beneath air that suddenly pressed like lead against her skin. _With a yelp, she fell against the metal and barely managed to roll over back out of the door. Goku, she noticed, had run in perhaps three steps before being thrown the the ground. He was kneeling and supporting himself with the palms of his hands, trembling as the force the the increased gravity suddenly crushed down on his spine.

Ky'ale's telekinesis had never been as strong as her telepathy but manipulating machinery required merely finesse, not necessarily strength. She reached out and focused on the blinking red eights, ignoring the pulsing pain in her body which had so narrowly avoided being crushed to powder. Nothing happened. She worked as hard as she could, delicately training wires and electric currents, sending her command down into the computer core of the GR.

88888. 88887....

_Dammit!_ Ky'ale's lips lifted off ivory teeth. 88888, the computer's screen repeated, defiantly.

Goku stared at Vegeta, unbelivable pain and weight crashing down on him. Damn. This was it. Even if Ky'ale was still alive they were all going to die, and if the kairn didn't die trying to retrieve the bodies of the saiyans she would die when she encountered Frieza. That's it! The end!

Then Vegeta's head turned slightly and sightless eyes focused on him. The pupils, swollen in the lightless room, diluated suddenly then widened again, and the bared chest of the smaller man rose and fell, defiantly. Goku stared at it, frozen with sudden shock. _Impossible. Impossible. He was exausted, caught off guard, and to be frank, always weaker than I was. But he's... still alive. After this time, he's still breathing..._

The saiyan prince's mouth moved imperceptively. Goku stared at the fine-boned face, watching the way the lips moved, watching the sudden flare in the eyes. Vegeta wouldn't let himself die until his entire body was crushed flat by the weight of the air and its own mass. Goku knew it, knew that the saiyan prince wouldn't ever give in to anything, not until it obliterated him. Never...

_"Not all of us," the older saiyan had snarled, "can simply obtain power in your fashion, Kakarotto. Not all of us can merely _become_ a vessel for power. Some of us have to work for it, have to train for it, have to almost die for it before it becomes our own."_

_Goku had only leaned back on the couch, studying Vegeta's irrate expression. Ky'ale had stretched out on the metal floor of the ship, waiting out another fight. Stupid of her, to get on one ship with both of them. She should have killed off Kakarotto long ago..._

_The younger saiyan shrugged, then splayed one arm over the back of the couch. "You know, Vegeta," he said conversationally, "I don't think you're angry because I'm stronger than you."_

_Vegeta's mouth curled into an angry not-smile. "You're right. I'm not."_

_"I think-"_

_"I _hate_ you because you're an imbecillic asshole with almost boundless strength who doesn't know the slightest thing about power, thinks all strength should be used for 'good' and that it and evil actually have designated borders, and is, by the way, a constant embarrassment towards the saiyan race."_

_Goku didn't really acknoledge the rant. When the saiyan prince fell silent, he looked up to see if the other was done, then started over. "I think that you're upset because you're not as strong as Frieza."_

_"Dammit, Kakarotto, I..." Once more, Goku remained silent for Vegeta's ranting but the saiyan couldn't think of any retort. When he had stopped trying, the younger saiyan contined._

_"And you're embarrassed that you'd given in to him for all these years." Vegeta was practically snarling. "That you didn't have the strength to rebel earlier. That's not your fault, Vegeta. Like you said, some people have to work towards strength." It wasn't meant sarcastically or snidely but Vegeta obviously took it as such. He snarled for a moment, eyes glittering dangerously, but kept himself under rigid control. He didn't attack Kakarotto, but the machines the GR used against him would need a little repair when they got to civilization._

_Ky'ale had turned blazing golden eyes onto Goku and, the fur along the back of her neck slightly raised, growled at him telepathically. _"Damn it, Kakarotto,"_ she snarled inside his head, eyes flaming gold. _"He was a bloody kid."

_Goku shrugged; he hadn't seen what he had said wrong. He'd been trying to make Vegeta feel better; he knew he revolted sympathy so he thought maybe if he made it sound like he didn't really feel _sorry_ for him, exactly... _What did I do wrong? I didn't mean...

_The cat sighed gustily. _"Idiot. You implied, even if you didn't exactly say it. Vegeta... we were raised where implications are just a new way of digging."_ Goku usually didn't understand Ky'ale, but he understood that far better than he'd be comfortable understanding. A flash of guilt hit him hard. Damn. He could see where what he said could be interpreted as a subtle jibe. _

_Damn._

Goku's eyes narrowed. Vegeta had been a kid when he'd submitted to Frieza, barely old enough to know what was going on. Goku had been doing great things when he was younger but Goku had been spared Vegeta's fate and horrible childhood by the stereotype that fueled the prince's hatred for him, and had he been in the other saiyan's place he doubted he'd have done anything different. _Damn it. He's still alive and he's not going to die until I fail...._

Golden fire passed silently over his skin, crawled over his entire body. Warm flushes of heat that bleached his hair yellow-blonde and his eyes a sharp blue. The power that swelled inside of him filled him entirely with strength and heat, and he managed to rise almost to his hands and knees before the first rush drained. One sharp, stiff motion at a time, Goku fought against the pressure and felt shaking hands grab desperately at Vegeta's clothing, managing to pull one handful away from where it clung to his skin. Dark eyes fixed on him, filled with self-loathing.

_Vegeta. I'm sorry I have to save you, but it's either that or you die._ Maybe he wasn't doing Vegeta's frame of mind much good but that didn't really matter to him right then. If he had to compare, Vegeta's death was much worse than his complaining and bitching about strength comparison and how unfair life was.

Ky'ale's eyes narrowed further and she continued her battle with the skewed effects of the black hole, still light years away. _Damn it! Why isn't this working? I'm not _this_ out of practice, I can't be! _But that was the only explanation there was; she'd done work on machines, coming up with temporary solutions and maintaining them with telekinesis, many, many times before. 88867, the computer flashed. 88868.

Ky'ale growled, hackles up to her ears, and forced the gravity level down with willpower alone. 88543. 86312. Goku flashed a sudden gold and staggered towards Vegeta, and Ky'ale felt his power hovering around her, fought through it to the machine. 84356.

There was no way Kakarotto could carry Vegeta out of here in this gravity. There was little chance he could stand up. Vegeta weighed 21,089,000 pounds in the room and Goku's own body was probably twice that and there was little chance the one man could carry both. Ky'ale felt a flash of pain travel between her temples but she held on, forcing the machine to listen to her and strive towards the 200 times it was supposed to be on. 79865. 80007. 78978. Hissing, growling, wrestling with her own mind. _I can't be this out of practice._ She'd known she was falling behind in physical sparring from pretty much everyone but telepathically and telekinetically she hadn't had a clue. _And now they depend on me and I can't do a simple mechanism._

But there was one thing she knew and that was that it was her job to keep Vegeta from dying. And if he ever did die, hell knew it wouldn't be her fault.

_It will not be my fault!_ A surge of unfounded fury towards the GR sent a wave of power into the system. 69474. 67235. Goku gritted his teeth and, blue eyes thin slits in his face, slowly rose to his feet, dragging Vegeta's body behind him. The older saiyan, completely unconcious, fell limply. 64132.

Ky'ale almost slipped, staring at Goku as he hefted Vegeta in his arms to carry him in a way that wasn't about to rip the saiyan in half by his own weight, wrapping the prince's arm around his own shoulders and carrying him loosely at his side. _Damn. So _that's_ a super-saiyan. Vegeta's still 16,033,000 pounds and he's carrying him like someone on earth. _Well, perhaps not precisely; by the look on Goku's face it was more than a little painful. Ky'ale gritted her pointed teeth and flailed to help him. The computer said, 45693.

_And I will not be responsible for Kakarotto's death, either,_ she decided. _They are _both_ part of my pack. I will not let either of them die._ 40087. 36425. Goku took one step, then another. Ky'ale began to take one step back with every one of Kakarotto's steps forward, making room for him to push himself and his burden out of the GR. Once the younger saiyan almost fell and Ky'ale's breath caught in her throat. If he fell on Vegeta his weight would crush the smaller man. But another step, and another, getting easier with each step as the gravity lessoned. 21456. 17980. Another step, and another, and Ky'ale watched the straining man's face as he moved forward. It was devoid of everything but determination.

Goku, for his part, barely noticed Ky'ale and what she was doing beyond the gradual lessening of the deadly pull. _I will not let him die, too. I lost Gohan, I lost everyone. I won't lose Vegeta. Not now. Not ever..._

8657. 7546. Vegeta almost fell from Goku's grasp and he flailed for the smaller man, abandoning the former way of carrying him for the more unorthodox method of wrapping his arms around whatever portion was nearest and lugging the prince towards the starlit square of safety. When he passed through it, Ky'ale had gotten the gravity down to 5134 and so he was moving, if far from easily, at least without feeling like he was crushed. Vegeta felt... fragile. He was reminded of Chichi, only Chichi was naturally fragile and Vegeta had only been crushed completely by something Goku could only begin to understand. As he passed into the regular portion of the ship, he got the strange sensation of floating and in a wave of disorientation that was almost nauseating he dropped Vegeta and fell to his knees. Most furniture that had not been nailed down and almost everything else that hadn't in some way been fastened had been drawn towards the GR and lay in disarray around the room. Goku noticed it from where he lay plastered to the floor. The door clicked closed and he felt himself stop from where he was being slowly dragged towards the heavy gravity. A wet nose pressed against the back of his neck.

"Gah!" Sitting bolt-upright, Goku felt the flame drain from him and his hair become black and fall into its regular style, his eyes again fade to darkness. Ky'ale sat regally, tail wrapped around her paws and foretalons, golden eyes regarding him intensely.

"Are you alright?" she asked, somewhat frantically, but her graze dropping constantly down to Vegeta's prone form made it clear that the question was formality.

"I'm fine." The answer was formality, as well. Goku turned and looked down at the unconcious figure at his feet. The chest rose and fell painfully in breath but it was clear more than one rib was crushed- more than broken. Vegeta had been pressed flat.

"He's alive, though?" Ky'ale turned to regard him as the question slipped out of the saiyan's mouth. Of course, Goku knew he was alive, but he needed to hear it, have it affirmed.

"He's alive. If he survives until we pass the magnetism, we can regenerate him." She nodded in the general direction of the regen tank.

Goku took in breath and let it out slowly. _If he survives._ Of course, there was no question in Goku's mind that Vegeta was going to live but the whirling doubt and fear in his gut asked rhetorics that his conciousness would not acknowlege. He would not consider what would happen if Vegeta died. _Damn it, Vegeta, you're not going to die. You can't die. I love you._

That thought stopped everything. Time, motion, space, everything froze in sudden golden realization. He wasn't supposed to think that. But the problem with thoughts is that it's hard to think about them before thinking them and he thought it without thinking. Goku's stomach twisted and tears that had no source shot needles of heat through his eyes. He blinked them back. _He's not going to die._ But he'd known that with the stubborn hope that Goku knew everything; he wasn't trying hard not to cry because he thought that the saiyan prince was dying.

_It was hopeless, it was impossible, and as someone who had lived most of his life off hope instead of pride Goku felt the lack crush him and felt his breath quaver in his throat. _There was no chance, in this lifetime or any other, that Vegeta would feel the same way towards him and he felt it around him, threatening to crush him. Ky'ale glanced at him and saw her head cock to one side in her curved, caricatured reflection in the saiyan's black eye. "Goku?"

He couldn't tell her what was really wrong though he felt the golden eyes reaching for him to pull the truth from him. He slammed up barriers he didn't know he had, telepathic sheilds Ky'ale had once taught him to put up when he didn't want her to intrude upon his thoughts. He had asked her politely not to _ever_ intrude upon his thoughts, if she would, but she'd only laughed her throaty laugh with every indication that each and all of her complex morals had been filled with teaching him the sheilds.

He didn't want to lie to her so he merely compromised the truth, crushing his hands beneath his knees to prevent any awkward straying. "I just..." He drew in shaking breath. "I just don't want anyone else to die." That much was true. It only wasn't what was wrong.

The lights flickered softly, for a fleeting moment. Ky'ale's head shot up. "We're moving past it," she sighed, voraciously. Any doubt Goku had left him and he couldn't stop tears of blended grief and relief. Ky'ale stood up, slowly, painfully- Goku vaguely remembered seeing her being crushed to the floor as he ran past when they went into the GR, he supposed she must have gotten out somehow to play with the gravity levels- and limped over to his side, putting her head onto his lap and gazing up at him with golden-pupiled eyes. The rest of her body slowly lay down, cat-like, on folded talons and paws.

Goku preferred not petting Ky'ale- it felt too condenscending, and she really only ever allowed Vegeta to pet her, and Gohan because she couldn't stop him, it was almost a sign of trust- but his hands were moving through the glittering golden fur before he could stop them. The golden eyes slid almost shut, then she wriggled her neck so that she looked up into Goku's eyes. The golden pupils flashed. The lights flickered twice, then went out again. "Kakarotto," she sighed, "you have to understand, before we get where ever we're going. We're all going to die."

The hair along Goku's neck crawled, all the more because he knew she was probably right. He said nothing, so she continued. "We don't stand a chance against Frieza. We're going to get there and be obliterated and all those people who count on you to bring them back to life will have to deal with having that confidence broken. We're going out because we have to try before we announce defeat, for your son and Vegeta's pride."

"And you?" The hopelessness in her words echoed in Goku's head and her confidence in everything she had to say made the situation flash in sudden clarity to the rhythm of the blinking lights. "Why are you going out there?"

He should have known. Ky'ale's eyes burned with golden fire, her tail lashing back and forth. "Because, Kakarotto," she said with stiff dignity, "I have to protect Vegeta. We're all going to die, but his death will _not_ be my fault. Nothing that happens to him will be any fault of mine."

The stars blurred as she blinked once and then made new patterns when she opened her eyes again...

_Vegeta was twelve. Freiza was ageless and always would be in Ky'ale's eyes; a kitten, she toddled behind her prince with the utter concentration of a child trying hard not to stumble on too-big paws while the young saiyan strided with peiced-together pride before her. Half-grown and lanky, he still managed to peice together a composition that Ky'ale tried despairingly to mimic. He held no fear of Frieza; she would have felt it in her mind as much and as well as her own terror. Unconciously he comforted her, almost unintentionally sent her slight reassurance. _

_"Prince Vegeta," Frieza acknoleged loftily. Ky'ale felt her hackles start to rise at the condescending tone but she forced them back down with a will. No matter how young, no one got away with threatening Frieza. _

_"Emperor Frieza," Vegeta responded, and Ky'ale felt his resistance and rebellion to the lizard-man in the way the words were spoken and in waves against her mind. Sparks floated between them. Ky'ale could still smell the faint tinge of death and pain and her own kin in the room and whether or not it was only her imagination she had to fight down the keen that swelled in her throat. _

_There was an expectant pause, before Frieza spoke again. "When you address me, _prince,_ you are expected to bow." The words were sneered loudly enough for the guards in the back of the room to hear and they took one step forward. Ky'ale couldn't prevent her hackles from rising but she glared at the guards, not the emperor, so there was little offense. _

_Ky'ale didn't have to see Vegeta to know the fire that flared in his eyes. "I would have thought the same of you, Frieza," he whispered, almost too quietly for Frieza to hear. "I am, after all, the Prince of all Saiyans."_

_"And what a high title that is," replied the lizard sardonically. Ky'ale's shoulders were up to her ears and the fur spiked around them. "Particularly as there are precisely three saiyans remaining, and both of the others continue to bow to their emperor." Nappa, three years older than Vegeta, had learned long ago where pride ended and appearence before Freiza began. Raditz, one year older than Nappa, told Vegeta that soon, the prince would as well. Vegeta had dismissed both of them as less than saiyans. Ky'ale told him, blatantly, that neither she nor her prince would ever prostrate before so weak a gecko as Frieza, but she couldn't get rid of the pained cries her kin had resounded into her mind as they died. Vegeta hadn't been much comfort, but he'd never been, to himself or to her._

_The two guards were only a few steps away. Frieza's eyes were glowing, Ky'ale's shoulders arced over her own head, Vegeta stood completely still, his pride a physical defense around him. The kairn had edged over to try and interpose herself between the two guards and her prince and perhaps if the situation had been less dire it would have been comical. The kitten threatening the lions, as it was. Vegeta ignored all three of his lessers and glowered feircely at Frieza, unaware of how similar the situations were. The kitten threatening the lion. As it was._

_"Bow to your betters, Vegeta," Frieza intoned cheerfully. Vegeta snarled._

_"I am not afraid of you," he said and it was barely the truth. He couldn't sense power levels but you didn't need to with Frieza; his strength resonated around him in a dark, green-gray cloud and you could smell it if you closed your eyes, feel it sliding along your skin. _

_Freiza only shrugged his thin shoulders and lashed his lizard tail. "More fool you," he said, calmly, and Vegeta doubled over in pain, gritting his teeth to keep from from crying out. He hadn't even seen the attack; it had been far too fast for him, and Ky'ale cried out and barely kept from jumping at Frieza, though her eyes were wide and almost completely gold, her pupils covering nearly the whole curved surfaces, her teeth fully borne, her claws digging into the tiles of the floor. Her fur stuck out almost entirely and her tail lashed back and forth furiously. Small and undeveloped as she was, she could have been frightening in a desperate way, her toungue curled around small, pointed teeth that glowed with the beginning of an energy attack, holding it back by force of will alone as Vegeta's pain lashed along her tight link to him._

_Vegeta's body bent double and as soon as it was low enough to be called a make-do bow Frieza lifted his hand and the pain vanished, the saiyan retaining his footing by force of will and pride. Ky'ale's snarl disappeared slowly, the blood-red light flickering into darkness in her mouth, but her pupils and eyes remained huge and strained, fixed on her emperor._

_"More fool you," Frieza said again as Vegeta straightened, slowly, and Ky'ale ghosted to his side, forcing herself to sit down as if calm. Vegeta's hands shook slightly in remembered pain and learned fear. He hadn't even seen the attack. Freiza could have killed him and he wouldn't have even known until he was alone in hell._

_And like most people his age, Vegeta didn't want to die. It was enough to force through his walls of fire and ice and pride a new lesson- he was the Prince of all Saiyans but Frieza was the Emperor of the Universe and there was a slight difference of rank to be considered._

_"Remember, Vegeta," hissed the lizard-man, "which one of us will always be subservient. I will always be greater than you, Vegeta. You. Are. Weak."_

_No one even noticed Ky'ale's returning snarl; Vegeta and Frieza had their eyes locked and a battle of wills ensued between them with both knowing what the outcome would be. Then Vegeta lowered his eyes and bowed, almost meekly, eyes closed to keep out the image of the emperor's face. Ky'ale recoiled, slightly, staring in hurt disbelief as her prince bowed low, then, at Frieza's command, kneeled. His own self-loathing lapped at the link between himself and the kairn, and Ky'ale, watching him shove aside his pride and the last reason for his own life, found enough coherence within her mind to blame herself._

_Damn it, Kakarotto, he was a bloody kid.... It wasn't his fault, it was never his fault, it was mine; I should have stopped him, I should have protected him, I should have kept him from being hurt. If he had died, it would have been my fault. It was my fault..._

_If he had died, it would have been my fault. My fault for falling so much behind in my training._

_Crushing pain, weighting down on her, turned into merely pain that threatened to turn her into a running slag of pain and thoughtless, baseless agony that came from no where and everywhere. She was going insane. She was insane. She screamed words of rebellion and words of secret plots Vegeta told no one else into nothingness and pain and only wanted it all to end...._

"Ky'ale?" Soft tan eyelids rose slowly from the curved glass surface of her eyes, and Ky'ale blinked repeatedly in the flourescent lights. _Power's back!_

Goku gently pushed her head off of his lap and the kairn rose slowly, watching Vegeta's chest rise and fall again. He moaned a little in pain as Goku touched him, drew his hands slightly away, then lifted him as gently as he could, trying not to touch the shattered ribs. "Help me with him, will you? You fell asleep for the past hour or so, I didn't want to wake you up. You haven't been sleeping too much; sparring with Vegeta as he slowly goes mad..." He smiled slowly and Vegeta softly moaned again as the three of them, as a strange, connected, single being, jerkily moved towards the regen tank.

"He seems better," Ky'ale intoned around a mouthful of Vegeta's clothing. It was muffled and indistinct but Goku understood.

"I gave him a sensu bean," he said, turning his head away from Vegeta's ear to respond. "I was going to give him one of the last two, too, because one didn't seem to do altogether too much good," Ky'ale could see that, "but we could need them against Frieza and I figured I'd know if he was going to really need it before the power returned." The kairn nodded, slowly. She'd completely forgotten about the sensu beans. She'd thought Goku had, too, but she supposed he hadn't.

The saiyan pressed Vegeta's hand against the black square and watched the computer sift through his data. Carefully, trying not to think too much and trying very hard not to hurt him, he pulled the remnants of Vegeta's clothing off of him and threw them into a pile on the floor. Not all of it, of course; he couldn't handle that, he didn't think. Ky'ale sat and watched him, somewhat puzzled but a lot more hurt. Goku decided to pry into that later; first he manhandled Vegeta into the regen tank and closed the clear door, watching the transluscent green liquid drip in around him. Then he sat on the tile counter and watched Ky'ale, who watched Vegeta, who watched nothing in particular and was unaware of the world moving around him.

"You saved him," the kairn said after a long moment.

Goku shrugged. "I know he'll be angry at me," he said, trying to dismiss how much that actually bothered him. He hoped Vegeta would understand if he said that he was paying him back for time he'd done the same for the younger saiyan when the ship had first taken off but he doubted it. _Ah, well. He already does hate me, he may as well hate me for something I actually did...._

"That's not it," she sighed in response, curling around her tail and casting her golden eyes downward. "I... Damn it, Kakarotto, if he had died it would have been my fault and he only survived because you were there..." She looked furious with herself and Goku felt something like pity twist his insides though he didn't know the exact nature of the emotion. Ky'ale's voice shook with self-loathing that could only be an echo of everything that Vegeta felt towards _him_self.

"Ky'ale." He wanted to tell her everything that had been bothering him, tell her everything he felt and everything he thought and let her know that sometimes you couldn't be everything you wanted out of yourself or everything everyone else wanted out of you, and sometimes you were trying so hard to please everyone that you don't even realize what you really want until it's beyond hope. He wanted to tell her but knew that she was incapable of keeping secrets from Vegeta and so he hesitated, then leaned back against the tiled wall. "I only got him out because of what you were doing." He didn't understand how she'd done it so it made it almost like a miracle and he fit all of that impressed acknolegement into his voice.

She shook her head. "I should have been able to do it better," she said, quietly. "I used to be able to. But I haven't been training and now there's... There would have been nothing I could do. Goku, he would have died..."

Goku blinked, more than a little surprised to hear himself being addressed by his real name. Ky'ale was looking at the floor with the resigned fury she rarely directed to anyone but herself and Frieza. Goku's stomach twisted at the expression. "Ky'ale," he said, quietly, "if you want to go train, I'll keep an eye on him." A brisk nod in Vegeta's direction. "We got him out and the danger's past; you can go do something for yourself. You and Vegeta need different training; you can't expect to stay perfectly in shape working out to someone else's particulars." Roshi had told him something like that a long time ago, and it seemed adequate for the situation. Ky'ale's golden eyes met his for a moment, then she nodded brusquely and rose.

Ky'ale's eyes stayed on Goku for another moment, then she nodded again and turned to walk away. Goku grinned just as she passed the threshhold and called after her. "Ky'ale." She turned around, her long neck twisting and the golden fur shimmering in the flourescent lights. He grinned. "We're not doomed, Ky'ale. We still have a chance at this. There're three of us and one of him and you and Vegeta, as well as I, have survived in worse statistics. We've killed him before, we can do it again."

Ky'ale's smile might have been weak but it was definitely there before she turned around and loped away. Goku leaned against the tile wall and studied the body floating in the green liquid, feeling the smile cool faintly as he stared at the still-livid wounds. _If we keep quoting encouragement at each other,_ he thought, remembering Ky'ale's out-of-character pep speech, _the two of us will get through this. And what about you, Vegeta? You're getting through this solely by will. You don't need anyone to tell you you'll survive; point you in the right direction, and you'll fight until you keel over and probably past then. You are magnificent, my prince..._

-

A/N: Awwww.... :D


	11. On Wolves, Sheep and the Equinox

Chapter Six

Sheep, Wolves, and the Equinox

Yaaaaay! Yay! Okie-dokie, this is the end of Part Two! Whoooot! And another yay! Part Three starts to get a little angsty so everyone get your morbidity caps on! (Can you tell I'm really hyper?) You'll have to wait for a little while for me to start Part Three, for two reasons- it's Part Three, y'all get some suspence, whoo, and because I'm trying to catch up to myself. That is to say, I'm only a couple chapters ahead of this, typing-the-story-wise, and I wanna be further ahead.

Thanks all for your reviews! They're really appreciated! I know I'd have more if I didn't have to OC, but I love her. Hugs and chocolate for all!

--

Vegeta was vaguely aware of floating in nothingness, of a throbbing pain gradually receding from his body. Very gradually. Regeneration took a long time if you were hurt very badly and Vegeta couldn't remember the last time he'd felt so much pain. So much _pain...._

But it left over a long period of nothingness that Vegeta lost himself to more than once and he let it go of his pain with a distant longing he didn't understand. It flew away like a dozen black birds peeling from his body and ghosting away beyond eternity. Vegeta curled around himself and felt their feathered forms abandoning him to the darkness behind shut eyelids, a darkness of green strained through red into black. Sometimes he wasn't certain he was healing; sometimes he felt so disconnected he was certain he was dead and he was merely floating in the darkness before returning to Hell. _Damn you,_ he thought to no one in particular and Goku in general. _Damn you... I never got to tell you... _He was nowhere and felt nothing and after a moment he realized that the pain was gone and the slight pressure- wasn't it more pressure than this? Wasn't there pain?- was pulling away, draining away like gallons of liquid strained from a tank... a regen tank? He was healed. The fluid was draining away....

He opened his eyes and closed them again as the flourescents glared a lot brighter than they should have been able to. How long had he been floating there? The liquid was almost gone; it still lapped against his legs in disturbance when he moved, but it was sliding away fast. Vegeta shivered slightly; it was cold in the regen room and he was soaked through. He shot a glance at his hands and, by the way the skin on the fingers was shriveled and wrinkled he supposed he'd been in the tank for two hours at least; probably four or five. Goku was asleep beside the tank, and Vegeta paused as he opened the door and slid out onto the tiles of the room. He was very bad at reading facial expressions but he could tell that Goku, whose face usually was crumbled in painful grief when he slept, wore a face entirely different this time. It looked, if not frightened, at least... concerned. That was the only way Vegeta could describe it. Concerned.

_Concerned?_ The obvious reason why Goku was worried shocked Vegeta, and he dismissed it with an almost vehement wave of his hand. _Why would he be concerned about me? He did what was expected of him and got me to the regen tank.... _ The thought of Goku saving him once again twisted Vegeta's innards and he felt like he was going to be sick. _Damn it, Kakarotto, you keep doing this to me. You keep showing, pushing, practically screaming how you're perfect and wonderful and how I'm just some broken bastard who will never be as strong as you and will never get back all I lost trying. _It was hard to summon the anger he had always kept for such thoughts and it hurt to realize how true it was. _I will never get back everything I lost. I will never get anything to replace it all. _He watched, a little guiltily, the way Goku's chest rose and fell with breathing, the way the slight wrinkles in his brow tightened and relaxed as something happened in his dreams. His heartbeat quickened slightly and he tore his eyes away, feeling.... Well. He wasn't _supposed_ to feel at all.

He snatched a towel from the wall and dragged up the viscous green liquid into its white fibers, watching them swell and dye as they absorbed the healing fluid. _Damn you, Kakarotto,_ he thought, not for the first time. _I didn't want you to save me. Don't you realize that? Don't you realize I want to be stronger, I don't want your help or worry or anything; I want to be on my own. I want to be alone._

But he watched the way the younger man's mouth moved in his sleep with a change in breathing and he wondered just how true that was.

Goku opened his eyes to light that wasn't tinted with green and, after a moment, opened them all the way, to the sight of Vegeta pulling his black training pants on over his legs. The saiyan prince was staring, transfixed, at the tiles on the floor and was obviously too deep in thought to really notice Goku's awakening, which gave the younger man ample time to sit quietly and watch. The muscles along Vegeta's shoulders flexed slightly as he pulled the cloth over his waist and closed the fly, rising as he did so and turning a little more so that Goku could see his back, trace the line of his backbone with his eyes, rise along the prince's reflection in the huge mirror in front of him until he focused on the reflection of Vegeta's fine-boned face and dark eyes reflected in the glass locked together. Again.

Goku's stomach dropped out of him and his heart took an entirely different route, lodging once again in his throat. _Vegeta. I wish I could tell you..._ He couldn't. _I wish I could tell you how much this hurts..._ But it was impossible; if he did he would lose whatever he might otherwise have had with the saiyan prince and they would be on terms worse than rivals, worse than enemies. Uncomfortable alliance, distrust, disgust.

"You're awake," Vegeta intoned dryly, backing away from the mirror a pace before turning around to regard the younger man. _He's hurt._ It was somewhat obvious; the more powerful saiyan wasn't half so injured as Vegeta had been but it was certainly livid in the bruises and cuts along his skin. By the loose neck of the armored outfit he wore that day Vegeta could see a line of brilliant purple behind the younger man's neck and realized that most of the bruising came from his own weight pressed onto Goku's skin. His heart lurched. _Kakarotto..._

"You're okay." The concern had evaporated from Kakarotto's face and he smiled genially up at Vegeta. Seeing the cold anger Vegeta formed like another mask over his features, the smile slowly cooled and died. Goku sighed. "Vegeta, I'm sorry I had to save you. But.... I didn't want... for you to die."

Vegeta turned aside and leaned against the wall, staring into space with an expression that suggested that space had preformed some sort of grave injustice. "Charming," he snarled, and Goku's heart throbbed in his throat. "Just charming, how you look down and see all your little friends in trouble and how you take it on yourself to be the hero and rescue everyone. Oh, believe me, Kakarotto, I appreciate it."

It was odd how beautiful he seemed then, but eyes flashing with dangerous hatred, Vegeta seemed composed, sculpted, perfect. Goku looked away; he couldn't keep from crying and stare at the saiyan prince at the same time. He wanted to tell Vegeta that he loved him but he knew what that would do to the atmosphere around them, what that would do to both of them. _And at the same time... If Ky'ale was right and we're all going to die then he's going to die and go to Hell and I'm going to die and go to Otherworld and he'll never know..._

But the older saiyan hadn't finished and with his shoulders braced against the metal wall he continued on the same vein, his words growing more and more furied and hard. "You know what it is, with you, Kakarotto?" Dark eyes met again but Goku had to search before he saw the familiar heat in Vegeta's eyes. It was locked behind layer after layer of ice and buried beneath the prince's acknowledgment. "You're not a saiyan. It took me time to figure it out but for all you appear to be you are not my kin. You are some sort of half-saiyan, a cowardly, ambitionless, prideless creature under the facade of a saiyan but with the mind and heart and soul of a human. You have achieved every dream of the saiyan kind with the reasons and goals of a human behind them. And now you're fighting the greatest enemy of saiyan-kind to protect and restore your human friends." He straightened, eyes flashing as he fueled his own anger with pieced-together passion. "You aren't saiyan. You aren't human. You're some sort of disgusting blend like your revolting half-breed son."

Goku was staring at the tiles and his shoulders were shaking and for one disgusted moment Vegeta thought he was crying. A knife of guilt pierced through dripping brown revulsion and Vegeta was unable to completely shake it off. _I shouldn't feel guilty for making him break down; prideless, baseless fool that he is._ But he couldn't convince himself of it.

But when Goku looked up his eyes glinted and Vegeta realized he hadn't been crying at all. He had been laughing, and the laugh still clung to the corners of his mouth that curled up like demon horns. "You know, Vegeta," he said, quietly, "I always knew. I always knew that the first person to understand would be you."

--

Ky'ale's eyes glowed golden and she stood, joints locked, before telling the computer, by mind alone, to start. The red numbers flashed, setting gravity level on ten-thousand times earth's and shooting out knife-edged computer-controlled attacks to spin viciously towards her. Before she was crushed to the metal floor she pushed down the gravity level- two thousand, one thousand, six hundred- and leapt into the air, watching the three machines that were attacking her whirl beneath her before shooting up towards her. Blood-red light arced out of her mouth; the gravity surged upwards to fifteen hundred while she was distracted and she was pulled back to the ground with the energy beam firing into nothingness. Talon- and paw-shaped dents appeared in the thick steel floor of the GR.

_Damn._ She needed a new strategy. She crushed the gravity back down to three hundred and danced to the side as the machines returned, whirling in circles around her. One leap and she soared over them but whether or not they were savvy to what she was doing or if they just followed closer they were right behind her. She dropped her control over the gravity and did two things at once- one was to use the little telekinesis she had to crush the mechanisms inside one of the machines into a little bundle of metal and wire inside of its body and the other was to use the sudden surge of gravity to crush a second machine beneath her talons. The third and last left a shallow cut along her skin but she forced the gravity down a third time and danced away from serious damage. She braced herself against the floor, dropped her control of the gravity level again, and fired down the machine with red light energy that gathered like fire within her maw.

Fighting the computer was a good deal more rewarding than Goku or Vegeta. She had a chance of winning. _Again!_ she crowed within her mind and danced back to the controls, setting the machines for more and the gravity higher. Fanatical determination mixed with the fun of the training and made it intoxicating, addictive. She cried out in excitement as more of the machines whirred from the ceiling and the force pulled at her again, strong and ferocious, drawing her towards the metal floor...

----

Goku looked up and looked almost sadly at Vegeta, the corners of his mouth quirked up. "I always knew," he repeated again, then shook his head. "You know, it's so easy to say that I'm a human and not a saiyan because it's who I am and who I decided to be, but it's a lie and we both know it. When it comes down to it and I'm fighting for something I believe in and everything disappears but what I'm doing and every action and reaction, every motion and every attack, then I'm saiyan and there's no going back from it. I could have chosen, Vegeta, to be a human, when I was a kid and Roshi told me I didn't _have_ to be a fighter, but I did have and I do have things I believe in strongly enough to fight for. And so I made my choice and if that makes me some sort of half-monster I wouldn't go back in time to change it."

Vegeta stared at the younger man, his breath shaking slightly as he realized how much the other saiyan was like his prince, how much at core all warriors are alike. It was the most passionate Vegeta had ever seen Goku when he wasn't talking about his son and bringing Gohan back from the dead and he found himself irrevocably drawn to it. Dark eyes melted wall after wall of ice and Vegeta worried his lower lip, forcing himself to keep breathing, trying and failing to maintain the shields of indifference. He couldn't keep his masks up and it scared him, he couldn't keep absolute control over his own emotions and it terrified him. He backed a pace away from the younger man but Goku was on his feet and Vegeta couldn't force himself to continue preventing him from closing the space between them.

Goku was moving like a creature in a dream and he couldn't speed up time but at the moment he really didn't care. He was caught, frozen, in the realization that there would be nothing worse in life than if Vegeta died and went to hell without ever knowing the other saiyan's thoughts so he kept moving, quietly, through space and time and heaven and hell the four paces that completely destroyed the distance between the two saiyans. Then he sent rational thought to hell where it belonged, curled shaking hands around the prince's shoulders and leaned in to kiss him full on the mouth.

Vegeta decided, in a detached sort of way while the world and the past and the future slid into order and peace and rightness usually reserved for the equinox, and it all maintained a sort of perfect reign over the moment, that Goku was a very good kisser. He pulled in breath and slid into the second, closing his eyes and seeing fireworks of color strained through his eyelids as he opened his mouth and allowed the foreign tongue to slide in and wrap around his own, lightning bolts of heat traveling up his spine.

Then reality came into play like a door slamming and his whole mind filled with the thought, _JESUS!_

The hair on the back of his neck rose and he let the kiss extend for one moment longer before he tore away with eyes wide and confused and mouth still opened slightly to let for prolonging of the contact. _JesusJesusJesusJesusChrist..._ Aside from that and the names of several other intergalactic deities and prophets Vegeta failed to maintain any coherent thought. Emotion, on the other hand, seemed to fill him from head to toe, swirling around in baseless, formless pattern, regret that he'd broken the moment to fear that he was being played with, all maintained by a throbbing desire.

It would be the sort of thing Frieza would do, to detect the desire in the saiyan prince and to exploit it, to bring up his hopes and crush him into nothingness. It was _not_ the sort of thing Goku would do and seeing the confusion in the younger man's eyes Vegeta knew it wasn't what he had been trying. But without the fear, what was left? Without the certainty that he was being used and exploited and humiliated and ridiculed, what else was there? Why else would it have happened, what reason could there possibly have been? Vegeta was helpless, not being misused, the eternally lost given a map.

Goku suddenly remembered how to breathe and after a few seconds of marveling in the rediscovery set the knowledge to use, pulling in air and reeling in confusion and heat-laden desire that the moment of yielding had brought to play. _Damn. _It was the only thing to think he could think of, which might have been ironic if he knew that the profane and atheist Vegeta was at the moment praying. One moment the prince had given in to him and the next he had pulled away and Goku didn't know what the other wanted. There was less than six inches between them and the other man's breath lit fires along his skin. Goku fought to clear his head. "Okay," he said, after a long moment of heavy silence. "You're turn to talk, Vegeta."

The prince stared up at Goku and tried to get his thoughts in order. They were so skewed and scattered and tinged with every emotion he had ever felt, however, that he felt as though he would never make sense of them all. He tried to think without them but it was rather difficult and he found himself stammering like a nervous child. "Kakarotto. I... I mean... You..."

Goku waited a moment but when it was obvious that this was the extent of Vegeta's speech he tried to fill in the blanks. "I'm... what? Male? Married? Myself?" He shrugged; by the look on Vegeta's face, all three and more. He shrugged philosophically. "I hadn't expected you to want it, too, Vegeta," he said, but his voice cracked on the last word. Vegeta's heart was somewhere in his throat and his stomach was no where to be found.

The prince swallowed hard and tried again. "I... don't know-"

Goku cut him off and the pain tangible in his voice inflicted equal parts agony on the saiyan prince. The younger man had been crushed by the second and he had no intention of believing for another moment that Vegeta might feel the same way. He wouldn't let himself believe it; he wouldn't let himself be hurt again. "I just didn't want you to die before I could tell you." His eyes glittered with his sorrow and for once Vegeta didn't feel any disgust at the show of emotion. He wished he could understand the art of feeling himself but he doubted he could. "If we all die I wanted you to die knowing..."

"Kakarotto. I-"

"When you recollect yourself enough to tear me to little quivering shreds, Vegeta," Goku cut him off again, turning away and walking quickly towards the door, "come and find me. It shouldn't be hard."

The sardonic pain fell into Vegeta's ears with such solid finality that his thoughts were somewhat crushed beneath it and all the confusion shattered with each and every circular thought train. He was left with a clean slate of a mind that was suddenly seized by the conviction that pride and confidence and isolation had to take second place to one thing in his life. He gritted his teeth and it was the hardest thing he had ever done, to call after the other man. He didn't want a connection to anyone else, didn't want to be tied to anyone, didn't ever want someone draining his strength so much. But he _did_ want what was offered and now that it was suddenly possible he wasn't going to let it slip away.

The gods had always screwed Vegeta over but who was he to reject the saiyan policy of 'fuck the Holy and their fucking holy ways'? _No, seriously, Vegeta,_ they said to him behind subtle giggles. _This time, we're being straight with you. Seriously. Go for it._

"Kakarotto." He was surprised he said it loud enough to be heard but if his hearing was to be trusted it was also stated with a clear confidence he in no way felt. Goku stopped, silhouetted in the doorway. "Will you let me finish a fucking sentence?"

_Heheheh... Straight with me... it's a pun..._

Goku turned halfway back to him and studied the prince out of the corner of his eye. "Will you let me finish making out with you?" It was almost a challenge, a threat, and Vegeta appreciated it. He was much better at challenges than speeches. In three steps he closed the distance between them, held the taller saiyan's chin in between his thumb and forefinger and pulled his face down, bringing his own mouth up to Goku's. He kissed him, hard, his tongue prying apart obedient lips, probing searchingly into the other's mouth. It lasted forever, the breaths lengthening into seconds and almost to minutes before Goku pulled slowly and gently away. Confusion and amazement and a slight glitter of hope reflected the flourescent lights to a million colors in black eyes. He stared down into Vegeta's gaze and saw the heat and fire, unprotected by shields of ice, burning freely in the darkness of his pupil.

"Alright," the younger man breathed into the silence, one arm curling around the smaller saiyan's shoulders. "You can finish a sentence now."

But there was really nothing left to say.

Vegeta could hear his heart hammering as they walked as one being joined at the mouth, staggering towards the single bedroom, breathing ragged and anticipant. Goku could feel the furious tattoo against his chest even muffled as it was by his shirt and after a moment his own heartbeat had synchronized to it. Or maybe Vegeta's had synchronized to Goku's; it was impossible to tell. Either way by the time they had shut themselves into the small room and Vegeta had perched, somewhere between burning alive with anticipation and tearing holes in his lip with nervousness, they moved and breathed and thought in the same way, same pattern, same circle. Goku shrugged almost contemptuously out of his armor and let it slide to the floor, wriggled out of his shirt and sidled beside Vegeta on his bed. He caught the smaller saiyan's mouth again in his own and slid his arms, hesitantly, carefully, around his chest. Vegeta leaned back and felt his head press into the pillows at the head of the bed and his body slide into its embrace, pulling the younger man on top of him, working his own mouth into the other's.

_I don't believe I'm doing this._

_I _can't_ believe it's real..._

He could hear the gods' condescending laughter and their patronizing smiles showed in their imagined voices. _Seriously, Vegeta. We're honestly not shitting with you, this time, we're not just going to snatch it back from you, relax and fucking enjoy yourself._ Kakarotto's breathing was hypnotizing and warm hands were working at Vegeta's waist and something hard poked at Vegeta's thigh. Its presence called an answering tightness that sent a combustion of heat through Vegeta's chest and centered on his groin. _I don't believe I'm doing this._ But the alternative was stopping and he didn't even want to consider it. He let his hands drift to the clasp of Goku's pants and worked it, carefully, in hands that barely shook while the spandex he himself wore slid off in Kakarotto's hands. Both sets of clothing fell, forgotten, to the metal floor, and Goku's hands wandered almost aimlessly down Vegeta's sides, stopping as they lay limply on his hips, sending waves of heat through his skin.

Vegeta moved his head to look at the other saiyan through wide eyes and felt his mouth quirk upwards slightly as his breath caught in his throat. _So much for emotionless isolation,_ he thought, a little dryly, and leaned forward to plant a possessive kiss on Kakarotto's lips that moved, slowly, to working with his mouth at the skin between the younger man's jaw and neck. He closed his eyes and leaned against skin that set fire to his body and melted all thoughts of ice to thin vapor.

------

Ky'ale spun in midair, her talons running through metal and sending the last machine, sparking, to the floor. _Gah,_ she thought, vaguely. She'd been working out for hours. At least five; had she heard Vegeta and Goku talking not long ago, or walking past the GR? Only a few minutes ago, she'd heard someone walking past the room, and maybe both of them. _I need to check on Vegeta, anyway. _And, of course, heal herself. Not only her encounter with the malfunctioning gravity controls but also her training left aching muscles and livid bruises. _Gah._

Carefully, gingerly, she walked up to the computer and changed the controls, turning it off so that the gravity slowly lowered down to one. She'd once let it drop suddenly and had almost hit the ceiling before she'd gotten control of herself. The door was difficult to open but the inside wasn't a knob, it was a lever and she could handle those with only a little effort. After a moment, she'd pushed her way out of the GR and stood, alone, in the sitting room. No one there, no one on the couch, no one poking through the books or sifting through the kitchen.

_Damn. Kakarotto must be in the regen._ He was more hurt than she was but she would have thought he'd have let her take the first turn, anyway. Three paces had her in the doorway. No one was there; a wet towel that smelled like Vegeta lay abandoned in a pool of green liquid that had run off from its white fibers. The regen tank was empty with a bit of green liquid still clinging in drops and small puddles in the inside. Vegeta's shirt lay, abandoned, on the tile counter. _It's like they were simply... abducted,_ she thought, a little anxiously. Okay, she knew that Judgement Day hadn't exactly come, but it certainly seemed like it might. _And so the righteous disappeared, leaving piles of their clothing and all their worldly possessions._ But the category 'the righteous' wouldn't include Vegeta, anyway.

She turned from the regen room and walked, slowly, towards her and Vegeta's room. Halfway there she froze in shock, one talon raised for the next step, both ears strained forward. There were... sounds. Sounds was a good was to put it. There were definite _sounds_ coming from the bedroom and while she wasn't precisely the romance guru she certainly identified _that_ genre of sounds when she heard them. After a moment of trying to work out how Vegeta and Goku's voices were coming through the doorway making similar sounds while it was most certainly impossible that they were in any way of thinking having sex with each other, she sighed and resigned herself to the inevitable. _Oh, for the love of shit... The earth is destroyed, there are three idiots who seem to think they can stand up to the universal emperor, one of which is entirely insane, one of which is grief-tortured, and one of which is a giant cat. A small green child is being tortured to aid the emblem of all evil to his goal of immortality. I have no clue where we are and we probably aren't even still tracking Frieza after the computer shorted out. And Vegeta's getting cruised by Goku the second I turn my head. _There was only one response she could make.

"Dibs on the couch," she said to no one in particular as she turned and strode towards the kitchen and the night's attempts to see how much alcohol it took to knock out a giant cat.

--

Part Three forthcoming. Now, I will repeat- Yay! Yaaay! :D


	12. Nothing Left of Beauty

**Part Three**

_We held hands on the last night on earth. Our mouths filled with dust. We kissed in the fields and under the trees, screaming like dogs, bleeding dark onto the leaves. It was empty on the edge of town but we knew everyone floated on the bottom of the river so we walked through the waste where the road curved into the sea. In the shattered season's life and the smell of burning was on you like a disease. In the moment of passion you said, death is a midnight runner. The sky had come crashing down like news of an intimate suicide. We picked up the shards and formed them into the shapes of stars that wore like an antique wedding dress. The echoes of the past broke the hearts of the unborn as the Ferris wheel sadly slowed to a stop. A few insects skittered away in hopes of a better pastime. I kissed you at the end and asked if you would accompany in a quick fall but you made me realize that my ticket wasn't good for two. You said, the cinders are falling like snow. There is poetry in despair and we sang in unrivaled beauty, bitter elegies of salotry and elegance. Strange, we ran down desperate streets, and carved our names in the flesh of the city. The sound has stagnated somewhere beyond the moon and darkness is the mystery of the cruelest mind. Still we lay under the emptiness and drifted slowly outward, and somewhere in the waiting we found salvation, scratched into the earth like a message. _

AFI

Chapter One

Nothing Left of Beauty

A/N: Alright, welcome back, everyone. I hope you all enjoyed Valentines day and are ready for installment number three of this story. Sorry that took so long (WAY longer than I'd hoped, I did a lot of failed attempts before getting a climax I liked), but so much absolute crap happens to the poor, innocent characters in this Part so I wanted to be certain that's what I wanted to happen to them before I published it. I'm still not _completely_ happy with it so far so I might be tweaking it a little as I go along; if the chapters take a little while longer than normal during the first two Parts then you know why.

What can you look forward to in Part Three?

¤ Angst! Yes, angst is in excess in Part Three! So much of teh EMO! We have people dying, people breaking, people going insane, people killing other people, people complaining and people bitching! Whoo!

¤ Vegeta character development. He makes this all so difficult...

¤ Returning to characters abandoned in Parts One and Two. Oh, yeah, them!

¤ Fighting. No more needs to be said. This IS DBZ, after all, and there's only so much you can change for a fic.

¤ S'more angst. Cause you can't have enough.

¤ Oh, come on. Like you don't make 'dragonball' jokes...

And Chapter One? Just an exploration of the difference between love and sex, and a quick exploration of Dende's mental state. Reviews are no LESS welcome than they were for the past eleven chapters... :P

¤¤

And so the darkness waited, still and silent, for them to wake. It hovered like poetry made visible on the fringes of every shadow, along every line of two faces lax with sleep. Careful, creeping, silent, it slid along the metal and fled from the reflections of stars, glittering with diadem perfection in each inch protected from light. Goku's eyes slid along its border, hovering in the thoughtless perfection that stands stark and still between awake and asleep. His arms tightened slightly against the body he was curled against, and he smiled to himself in sudden recollection, then, as recollection turned to realization, had to exert actual will to keep from unconsciously tightening his grip. _God._ It was the only thought that would come to him for a minute; he was afraid any more would shatter the warmth and peace and black-and-white perception of the moment. _God. Oh, Jesus Christ, this isn't... it's... _real

Something deep inside of him continued debating the difference between reality and dreamscape but the presence of a very tangible, very warm, very living presence pressed against his front, the presence of slightly-pointy black hair against his chest and throat, made it a rather moot point and the reality of the moment crushed the hovering detachment of not-waking half-sleep, forcing an unconscious, heaving sigh. He felt Vegeta move slightly against him and wondered, vaguely, the contentment of reality crushing slight doubt and sleep-fuzzy memories dulling the need for any other thought, what his reaction would be upon waking.

For a long moment, Vegeta's mind decided against shoving onto him all memories at once and decided to take things one step at a time. Vegeta's mind had quite a bit more common sense than Vegeta himself. And so he floated, aimless, strangely and stirringly detached, wondering what, exactly, made the odd feeling and strange stir of feeling and almost painful warmth all around him. But as true awakening drew closer and Vegeta's mind came to the conclusion that it didn't have much more time before Vegeta got control of his thoughts and memories, it began to let him remember, one bit at a time. Although he'd remembered most of what had happened since they got on the ship it reminded him of the whole time, before pouring the rest over him like ice water.

Goku knew the moment Vegeta was truly awake by the sudden tensing of his muscles, the sudden hammering of his heart that the younger man's hand, resting on the tense and tightly muscled skin of the prince's chest, felt clearly increase. The corner of his mouth quirked up. _And what will happen when he remembers yesterday?_ Of course, with lack of any regular sun, Goku was uncertain of what made 'day' and what made 'night' so he had the second day of space travel decided on clear boundaries- 'day' occurred when he was awake and 'night' occurred when he was asleep. While he had long associated sex with nighttime, it and such activities seemed to certainly more qualify for the standards of day.

_And I had, to be fair, always associated sex with _women,_ too._ They were somewhat uncomfortable thoughts but he figured he would have to face them one way or another anyway. They weren't as embarrassing as he thought they would be. He supposed, after one actually _did_ sleep with Vegeta, the contemplation of the fact doesn't make one blush as easily.

Vegeta's mind, hearing the echoes of his mental cursing and the waves of his self-directed loathing, sighed to itself into darkness and shrugged slightly. It had tried. It was, after all, only unrealistic and simple personification of unconscious thought and there wasn't ever-so-much it could actually do to make everything better. Then the torrents of Vegeta's self-criticism hit like tsunami against the sides of his skull and he almost panicked as he tried and failed to rebuild the walls of ice. There was nothing left, there, and he was suddenly almost... almost scared of being cut off. Isolation seemed so alone...

And Vegeta's mind was forced to do something. _And would I do anything different, if I could go back?_ it prompted into the self-loathing panic. Vegeta writhed, wriggling loose from Kakarotto's grip. The younger saiyan let go easily, sitting up, feeling the blankets slide down his chest. Vegeta forced his eyes away, ignoring the other man, trying to fight down emotions that made no sense. _Damn it. Damn it all!_ Because he wouldn't have, if he _could_ go back in time. Because he couldn't even think about it.

But before his mind could curve into another circle Goku's hand curved around his wrist and the larger man pulled his prince backwards and forced him to sit on the edge of the bed. Wordlessly, Goku extended a handful of black spandex clothing towards the smaller man, which was ignored. Really, what were the reasons behind modesty at this point? Goku picked the thought up off the other man's face and discarded the outfit with a shrug, wriggling out of the sheets and blankets and swinging his legs around to sit next to Vegeta, not quite touching him.

He had been hoping for calm acceptance but had rather anticipated this anxious reaction from (and towards) Vegeta. They had both been trapped by the moment and Vegeta was likely to be... touchy. After a moment the prince relaxed slightly and Goku nodded, patiently waiting for the time when he would not be dismissed. It usually came and went within seconds. He had been horrible at fights when he had first been married, prone to shifts in emotion that made him strongly attached to her during close nights and almost in tears when something happened that made them argue. He had mellowed out, though, in eight years of marriage. And, during that time, had gotten good at knowing when what he had to say would be acknowledged and when it would be voraciously dismissed. Vegeta and Chichi weren't all that different, if one hadn't been Vegeta and one hadn't been Chichi and they weren't different in so many- countless- ways.

Vegeta seemed about to say something- possibly an accusation that he had been seduced, but most probably something about how revolting and base one or the other of the two were. He stopped at the look in Goku's eyes. Not judging or angry or cold or anything strong or hard or decisive. Only... there. Warm and listening and right there, a slight smile playing on the corners of his mouth. The only thing he could think of, then, was, "Damn," and it came out like someone barely breathing the word. Goku smiled, then, fully, the light from the slowly-moving stars shimmering across his face.

"Precisely," he agreed. Then his brow drew down slightly, concerned. Vegeta wasn't good at reading facial expressions but the worry dripped from the words Goku spoke. The prince edged back, a little put off by the strange and emotional words, the tangible concern. "Vegeta, how long did you think you were going to remain completely shut off from the rest of us? Entirely isolated?"

The saiyan prince's brows drew down as well but it was not in concern. "As long as I wanted to," he replied, his words themselves edged with steel. "I don't need you. I don't need anyone." There was a new note to his self-hatred, there; he had caved in and took what he perceived as charity, as further kindness, and had done it without being able to really stop himself. He had been trapped by the moment and had pushed everything aside and the repercussions had left him without the defenses he had kept for so long, the sudden shifting inside of him would take time to overcome. Goku stifled a sigh, but deep inside something shifted, aroused by the challenge of Vegeta's inner despair. The prince was complicated; he had levels and layers Goku had trouble imagining. He recalled King Kai's training and his secret, hidden pleasure at his first meeting with Vegeta, his initial meeting with Frieza. The inner stirring spread a new type of heat through him and he swallowed his desire, fighting it with memories of alien pornography. Goku was a saiyan and saiyans were drawn to challenges.

He smiled genially at Vegeta and thanked God- or Kai, or whatever the hell controlled the workings of fate and mortals- that the prince couldn't really read facial expressions with the natural fluidity of humans. Vegeta saw nothing but the familiar friendly concern. "But you didn't want to, any more," he prompted, then, not letting Vegeta take up the thread, continued. "You wanted to break the chain and you did; you didn't need to but you wanted to. Vegeta, you don't _need_ to do almost anything; you're coming with me to kill the most evil person I've ever seen, and I think that entitles you to doing what you want. And if," he grinned spontaneously, "that happens to make someone else happy, what of it? You never cared what I thought before."

Vegeta didn't say, that was before. He didn't have to. Despite Goku's light attitude they both knew that things had changed, things had swung around off-balance and they only had until Frieza landed to find their footing again. He tried to find flaw in Goku's logic beside that point but couldn't. _He's right,_ he admitted to himself, and his mind nodded happily. _I _am, _after all, the Prince of all Saiyans. I am entitled to do what I want, and even if I don't need him..._ He hesitated. He didn't need Goku; he didn't need a lower-born, idiotic saiyan in order to... he didn't need him to be himself. He didn't want to think, _to be safe without the shields._ But he had the disconcerting feeling that he was floating as he contemplated the thought, as though he had no grounding and there was a thought that prodded at him just beyond the thoughts he was willing to think. He didn't _need_ Goku.

Did he?

No.

His chest squeezed and he wondered how long he could take this. "What do you want from me?" he asked, quietly, snarling as he realized how much he sounded like some little girl who'd been seduced, whining about marriage. His voice became cold, his tone final. "I'm not..." Choked on the next two words. He couldn't finish. He couldn't use the words 'in love.' They had been permanently eroded from his vocabulary.

Goku's smile enveloped him and he looked away, unwilling then to be completely absorbed. "Vegeta." The voice compelled him to look back. Their eyes met, without the fire of before but with definite desire stirring inside of him, and now that the object of the emotion was within reach it was almost unbearable. "I don't want anything out of you that you don't want to give to me. I want to be your friend. I want to sleep with you on occasion." He wasn't usually this frank. Vegeta, feeling his insides roil within him, waited for the three god-damned words he absolutely abhorred that always infiltrated situations like this. He didn't want them to come because he knew they would shatter everything that he held like glass in his hands and he didn't want that to happen.

"I don't expect you to fall inescapably in love with me, Vegeta." The result of the statement was long and silent, a pause of mingled surprise and relief. Goku smiled; despite everything, he was usually good at saying the right thing even if by complete fluke. "This isn't some cheerful fairy-tale where everything is made all better by one kiss, I'm a fairly inadequate knight and no offense, but you're a mediocre princess at best." The look on his face made it a shared joke between them but Vegeta still bristled. Not, of course, at the insult of being called a less-than-satisfactory princess but, of course, at the more serious insult of the lower-born saiyan mocking his reign over the entire race. Such as the entire race was.

Vegeta didn't like being mocked. Goku felt a little bad for the remark but, on contemplation, he realized it was really either let the other man know that he was joking when he said things like that or treating him like something fragile, that you had to _think_ before you talked to and handle with care. He held his expression static and friendly and light-hearted until the anger faded from Vegeta's.

And when the finely-boned face was finally passive, Goku leaned forward and brushed his lips against the other's. There was only a slight hesitation before Vegeta responded. Goku's inner saiyan roiled with challenge met and the heat of desire hit him like a hammer.

Unfortunately, a rather dry, sardonic voice chose _that_ moment to drift from right outside the door. "Not to insult your Rapunzel wet dreams, Vegeta, but I agree with him," it drawled, Ky'ale's old accent coming to the fore with impressive force. The cat's sibilants rolled, her 'r's' were drawn out in long, low growls, and she sounded almost beastial, if her tone was anything but insentient. Somehow, it made her almost tenor voice sound more feminine. There was some shifting behind the door and Ky'ale continued in telepathy that both Vegeta and Goku could hear. _"Will someone please open this door and let me in before you two start something I can't stop?"_

"How long was she out there?" Goku asked, pulling away from his prince, who wore a strange grin on his face while he rose from the bed and grabbed his pants from the floor. Goku noticed two things he found off- the first being that Vegeta, while taking quite a bit of offense if even a light-hearted joke came from Goku, took no offense from Ky'ale's open sarcasm. The second was that he had decided to dress for her coming in, when he felt fairly confident that even her less-than-hominid nature prohibited any sort of make-do modesty between the two and their bond probably prevented any sort of closed relationship anyway.

Vegeta shrugged, picking the pile of discarded armor Goku had worn off the floor. "Probably since she heard me waking up," he said, making no attempts at being quiet as, without the walls he had kept up for so long, she could probably hear his words only in echo to his thoughts. It wasn't uncomfortable, anymore. Like having a portion of one's body replaced. Goku's second question was answered as Vegeta put the armor onto his lap and leaned in so that their faces were inches apart. He smelled like sleep and dream and sex. "I don't want to be too tempted to do anything to you, for the next few minutes. It would embarrass her." His tone implied he didn't really care what Ky'ale thought or if she was embarrassed, but Goku figured he must or he wouldn't have gotten dressed at all. He wondered if Vegeta had come to terms with it all at once and if so, he envied him. He would still have to analyze his own emotions when he was finished with the prince's.

Then Vegeta's mouth closed around his own and he didn't really think at all.

_"Damn it, Vegeta, come here. Don't start!"_ Claws dragged down the steel of the door with a ringing shriek. Vegeta's laughed into Goku's mouth and withdrew, and the younger man hurriedly slid his legs into the cotton-esque fabric of the pants.

"Why do you put up with her?" he asked Vegeta's retreating back, suddenly curious. Vegeta could not tolerate Gohan but he put up with Ky'ale his whole life, and she seemed much worse.

The smaller saiyan didn't turn around but Goku could see the grin in the way he walked, the set of his shoulders. "You'll see," he assured the younger man, who had answered the first question he'd formulated with the third. Vegeta tolerated Ky'ale's insults because he really didn't think much of her beyond himself. There really wasn't much Ky'ale beyond Vegeta. He tolerated her because she was so much a part of him. He tolerated her because...

The door swung open and Ky'ale, holding tightly in her maw a wooden tray, upon which were two white plates heavily laden with food, trotted in, cloaked by supreme and unforgiving dignity. She balanced the tray on the bed, leapt up behind it and curled up on the side closer to the wall so that she could stretch behind the two seated saiyans, and glowered at both Goku and Vegeta with brightly glowing golden eyes.

Vegeta sat between her talons and Goku, picked up the plate closer to himself, and mulled over its contents. By the way he pushed the food around his plate rather than shoveling it, Goku guessed maybe he hadn't quite leapt to terms with every event of the day before and smiled to himself while shoving food down his own throat. Maybe he was avoiding his feelings for the moment but that had never, _ever_ affected his appetite. After a moment the prince at his side began to eat, as well; slower, however, and every once in a while he offered some to Ky'ale, who ate it enthusiastically.

After Goku had cleaned his plate, however, the kairn cleared her massive throat and, ears pressed back, looked from one saiyan to the next. Vegeta largely ignored her, Goku turned towards her and paid attention but it involved looking over the prince and it was, clothing or none, difficult to do that without wanting to jump him. His stomach churned slightly with avoided thoughts and feelings, and he wondered if that was why Vegeta hadn't wanted to eat much. He hated avoiding his thoughts but he preferred contemplation of his innermost mind when he was alone- it usually didn't take long and it was easier to finish it quickly when no one was around to interrupt him- and as of yet his desire to think had been pretty much flattened by his desire to do other things. He decided to think more after Ky'ale was done. And he and Vegeta had concluded what Ky'ale had interrupted.

"Well," the cat drawled, after a long moment of waiting for Vegeta's attention; obviously, in vain. "It would appear I may have been left out, a little."

Goku swallowed laughter. Left out! The stars had all combusted and been re-lit by a celestial dragon breathing fire, the universe had been turned over like the page of a book and had restarted on the following, the gods had dropped out of Heaven and swore unending fealty to mortal kind; it had all passed by the kairn's golden eyes turned blind, and she thought it seemed as if she had been left out! So perhaps it was a slight exaggeration; he didn't really care. Left out! Imagine...

By the way Vegeta's mouth was curving just a hint upwards at the edge, he was thinking pretty much the same thing, if somewhat less melodramatically. A hand seeming to have a mind of its own drifted over golden fur. "You may have been, cat," he acknowledged, amused. "Or you may have simply been completely oblivious. Who can tell?"

Ky'ale glared at him, then snorted audibly. "Well. Not that it really matters." A sudden grin flashed white teeth. "Except, of course."

"Hmm?" Goku smiled at her, and her tail waved slowly back and forth. He was glad Ky'ale wasn't angry at being left out; he felt a little guilty for not telling her his thoughts since she was directly effected by all that had unconsciously occurred between himself and the prince. The kairn, however, had the remarkable talent of easily getting over such offenses, particularly if they were committed, in whole or part, by Vegeta.

"I get the couch." The huge creature stood, the bed at once sinking under her and unbalancing the lower-born saiyan as she leapt easily off of it. Vegeta smothered a smile on reflex. _Well. It appears she considers Kakarotto on her own level, then; willing to let him sleep in the room in her place, not needing to rest assured of my safety._ While she had eventually let Nappa take the esteemed position of 'one who is trusted with Vegeta's life,' she had never even gotten to the level of trusting Raditz in that position. _Raditz,_ she'd said, _is not the idiot that Nappa is. Raditz may think to attempt to gain your favor with Frieza by overthrowing you and taking your rank, Vegeta. Nappa can't really think beyond tying his shoes. _

Standing in the doorway of the room, Ky'ale paused for one minute, talon held in mid-step. "Vegeta. Before I forget. When the computer short-circuited, it stopped tracking Frieza. You have to come and set it." The prince sighed, and rose, feeling a little disappointed. Ah, well. He'd come back and this was something that pretty much had to do right away. They were probably losing ground, floating aimlessly in space, and he didn't want Frieza to have time to become immortal.

Watching the kairn and the saiyan leave the room, the prince muttering obscenities under his breath, Goku sighed and leaned against the wall, closing his eyes against the moving lights of stars. _Well. I finally get time to think._ But now that he could, he didn't know where to start. He didn't want to start on guilt towards his wife or son; he felt bad for Gohan but he didn't feel much anything towards Chichi at the moment. _Did you love me, Chichi? Or were you getting as tired of it as I was?_ By the way she was acting, he had the feeling it was the latter. As for Gohan- Goku and his wife weren't fighting and they probably wouldn't be if Goku could drop the flag down just right. He could still end up with both his mother and his father. Or... well, Chichi and Goku could work something out. Probably. He stifled a sigh and shelved the worry away for later. It wasn't relevant until Chichi was alive again.

He thought back to his conversation with the saiyan prince and smiled slightly, a little sadly. _Gods, Vegeta,_ he thought after the other. _I... Damn it. You may not need me, but I do. I do need you._ He wondered what it would be like if Vegeta never returned all he felt towards the other man and blinked, hard, slowly. It didn't help that Vegeta was... well, Christ, he was Vegeta. He was the Prince of all Saiyans and he was certainly not female and it all had an eerie sense of detachment around it. He thought back to growing up beside Krillin and wondered, faintly amused, what the bald human's reaction would be. _So. Does this make me gay?_ He'd never attached the emotion Krillin and Yamcha had to the word but he'd never thought of it in regards to himself before and when he did think about it he realized he wasn't particularly fond of it. _But... well._ He supposed whether he liked the word or not it applied to the situation. He was in love with Vegeta. It was hard to swallow but it wasn't completely inpalpitable and he would have to face the actual things entailed eventually. _Go on as I was, without whatever I might make of this, or be called a faggot by Krillin. Not really all that much of a contest. Ky'ale would bite him anyway._

Ky'ale... he wasn't going to think about Ky'ale. She had taken the plates with her when she had left, leaving the tray in the corner to pick up later, not bothering to try and manipulate the empty white circles onto the wooden square. _So. What does all that tell me? That she approves?_ That much was obvious. Ky'ale would have approved of the kairn genocide if it had been Vegeta who had ordered it. To her, the saiyan prince could not err and she agreed with whatever he did. Always loyal, always by his side, always fiercely defensive of him and whatever he did. Goku sighed quietly. _You're a nut job, Ky'ale._

She would help him, he knew; she would keep his thoughts from wandering all over hell and keep him from killing off all emotion and hiding behind ice again. Or at least, she would if he let her; if he did not she would simply agree with his decision to shut everyone out. They had a complicated relationship and Goku didn't think he would ever want to be part of it. He doubted it would be included in what was expected of him, anyway. He wanted and he was pretty sure Vegeta wanted there to be clear boundaries between them; a mental edge between where Vegeta ended and Goku began, and there was no such thing in the bond between saiyan and kairn. Goku sighed again, and opened his eyes, looking around the room. It was tiny; the whole ship was but this room was, aside from the bathroom, the smallest of all of them. He could hear Vegeta right outside, instructing the locks on the computer to do to themselves various things Goku was pretty sure versions of password-protection software were anatomically incapable of.

_I shouldn't,_ he thought to himself, somewhat reluctant to face the fact, _worry about getting too close to him. _Vegeta didn't just want space. He wanted isolation, a clear and distinct wall between them. He wanted to remain separate, alone, a single element in the sea. Goku stared at a slight flaw in the metal roof of the ship. _He doesn't want to be attached to me at all. He wants... to be alone. Strong and alone, without depending on anyone or anyone depending on him. He doesn't want to care about whether I'm alive or dead because if he does then he has a flaw, a weakness, something for his enemies to work from. And he doesn't want that, or to think of himself as weak._ Goku shook his head, wishing the prince was less complicated. _He doesn't want... doesn't want to be able to feel _anything,_ not really. _But he did and Goku smiled, slowly and slightly, as he realized it had been _he _who had broken through the ice. _And he does feel more than what he lets on, I can tell. Vegeta, you have to be aware of the fire inside of you; you have to feel it the way I can see it in your eyes._

If Vegeta insisted that he did not love Goku, then Goku would make him. He would bring out what he could see in the prince's eyes and he would prove, to Vegeta and Chichi and everyone else, that it was there. _You will understand, Vegeta. You will understand if I have to force you to, because I _am_ in love with you._ Outside, Vegeta threatened to do something to the computer that Goku didn't think the other saiyan would actually lower himself to doing. His smile grew, slightly; _I hate to say it, Vegeta, but between my emotions and your lack thereof, I don't think you stand a chance._

He stared at the door, suddenly feeling very warm and rather uncomfortable; it seemed like quite a bit of time had passed and he was suddenly very anticipant of Vegeta's return. _I will make you care about me, Vegeta; I will bring you back to the person you should have been. _It was a challenge, and Goku, despite everything, was a saiyan.

¤¤¤¤

Darkness took longer to be alleviated here. It never really left, only was fended off for another hour while Dende roiled in pure pain and wondered what he had done to piss of the gods so much. Sometimes, he saw faint echoes of light behind his eyelids while Ky'ale asked him questions and advice and offered dry-lipped sympathy or King Kai hammered questions down at him. Sometimes, he saw a star through a window when the door in front of him opened but it was rare and afterwards would come pain. _I don't want to see. There's nothing worth seeing. There's nothing of beauty left in the world..._

To Dende, there was no distinction between night and day. There were slight distinctions between sleep and waking, but without light sometimes he thought he was asleep when he wasn't or awake in a dream. It was disorienting; he forgot where he was and sometimes he wanted to wake up and see Piccolo mulling over flames or Gohan sparring with his father in the sky. But Gohan was dead and so was Piccolo and he was alone, alone forever.

What all had he told Frieza? He knew the betrayal was there because it weighted him down every second of every day, sitting quietly and unobtrusively but omnipresent in his mind. But he couldn't remember what it _was,_ what he had said, when, but it was certainly there. He had nightmares about it that threw what exactly had been said into unrivaled confusion. The Namic child closed his eyes tightly but the lack of difference was disconcerting. It was like being blind, the same lightlessness, the same ever-present night, the same lack of hope for ever seeing again. He wasn't certain of the passing of time unless he talked to Ky'ale, and had no real knowledge of his physical state.

The pain came irregularly, as if daring him to make a pattern out of it. The torture commenced until his shrieks became articulate, and he had no control of what his body would scream out to try and get the agony to stop. Curses? Lies? Treachery? He didn't know, but it weighted like lead on his conscience. He was so young... And already broken. He couldn't cry. He had run out of energy, out of incentive, out of whatever made a child care. And so he sat, alone, in the darkness.

_Nothing left of beauty... Ever again..._


	13. On Logic and the Illogical

Chapter Two

Logic and the Illogical

A/N: Wow, I got a lot of reviews between last chapter and this one. :D Wheee! Ookily dokily, what to say? I guess I should start with saying that this'll be the last chapter in this story. I just got kind of tired of it and decided to wrap it up early.

Heheh! Just kidding! It's April first when I'm publishing this, so... y'know, I had to. But god damn, I've been working on this FOREVER and it WILL be finished.

Anywho, as always when I'm giving a plot twist I'm a little hesitant in posting, not so much because I hesitate at changing the direction of a fic from where it was going before but because I have the most shitty plot twists. Seriously. Well, the good thing about this one is this fic is really aimed at the ever-rare breed of female DBZ fans- yay for testosterone imbalance! Whee!- and female DBZ fans love Dende. So at least this twist will get the desired 'upset' reaction. From some people, at least. Myself, I always felt a little neutral towards Dende, so I didn't really get that worked up doing all the horrible, horrible things I've done to him in these chapters...I'm a horrible person. -goes off to buy herself some morals-

Enjoy, all! And keep up the wonderful review work. :D

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_Chichi, I was thinking about it, and... we need to get a divorce._

Goku sighed, flexed strong fingers over the steel wool dish-scraper and plunged his already pruning hands back in scalding, soapy water. The smell of old, crusted-on foodstuffs clogged his nostrils and it was impossible _not_ to drift back in his mind to lounging in the house he shared with Chichi while his wife did this sort of thing and he watched her, waiting for her to finish whatever he was going to eat, waiting for her reply to whatever he had baited her with then. Then she would finish and come over and they would talk, about whatever he wanted to talk about or whatever she was interested in.

_I don't love you anymore, Chichi. I don't think you love me, either._

The biggest difference between then and now, he reflected, was _not_ that Goku was now the one up to his elbows in greasy water with unidentified objects floating in it. It was really more that he and Chichi had to strive to find anything they could talk about; even in the beginning, when they were young and stupid and supposedly in love, what she enjoyed contrasted so heavily with what Goku loved that it was almost impossible to find any connection. _Not that,_ he thought somewhat wryly, dumping more liquid soap onto the dish in hand, _a relationship with Vegeta is exactly low-maintenance._

Vegeta, at the time, was sparring with Ky'ale. Goku hadn't even tried to invite himself; if there was one thing he'd known all along it was that Vegeta needed space. Vegeta needed a lot of space and well-defined space and needed it more than any woman Goku had ever known at any given time of the month. But Vegeta was also a saiyan and he could understand the thrill of fighting that was the base of Goku's existence, the continuous strive for strength, even, in a way he refused to acknowledge, the fevered defense of people close to him. He hadn't fought at all for Nappa or Ky'ale when they had all three had come to earth but Goku stood convinced of inner benediction inside the saiyan prince and knew that if he had only had someone he cared about more than anyone- Ky'ale not counting because of who and what she was, to Vegeta and overall- he would fight for them.

They'd fought that morning over the most mundane of all things- the dishes, the food, the water supply. It had been short but nasty and in the end Goku had made amends only by promising to wash the dishes- they had completely run out of clean ones and the dirty ones had been re-used enough times that they were noticeably a hygiene hazard, Ky'ale not having enough dexterity to ever manage soaped, wet, slick porcelain- and not train that day to make up for the spent water in the amount he wouldn't be using in the re-gen tank. Vegeta's temper had been worn thin by the computer, which was now happily droning away as it tracked Frieza's ship. Ky'ale had dozed through the fight. She was getting good at that.

So it wasn't precisely low-maintenance. And it didn't help that Vegeta denied it even being a relationship, tried to keep it as impersonal as possible though it had to hurt the prince as much as it did Goku. But it was more than Goku had ever had and he didn't have to pretend to something he didn't feel or lie about what he did. Mostly.

He put the last dish, almost all of the clinging foodstuff scraped off, onto the counter and sighed, flinging droplets of soapy water all over the kitchen as he brought his hands behind his head and stretched, examining his handiwork. Chichi would have been appalled at the job which Ky'ale would, when she left off the training, undoubtably classify as 'half-assed work.' Even the ones that didn't have crusted-on remnants still had red-and-yellow smears from past meals and smelled like a delightful mixture of liquid soap and old grease. The saiyan scowled good-naturedly but called it quits. It wasn't that important and they were just all going to get dirty again anyway, so why be particular? He left them stacked on the counter, thought twice and drained the dirty water from the sink, then collapsed bonelessly onto the couch and leaned into its embrace, trying to clear his mind. Usually, it was a very quick and simple feat to accomplish.

He closed his eyes and saw explosions and blood, heard screams that had actually been ripped from the throats of his friends and screams his mind gave to their deaths, felt his face harden to stone and saw his anger reflected on Vegeta's face. He wondered why Vegeta was there. He wondered where Bulma was, felt a tremor of worry for her beneath grief and devastation and cold, hard anger. But more than that, more than anything, he wondered why Vegeta felt his anger with him, wondered if the saiyan prince was affected in any way by the deaths or if he just felt Goku's own anger and was possessed by emotion floating through air around them. But rational thought held no presence here. Frieza turned and he'd launched himself into battle, golden light ripping around him.

The flourescent lights seemed too dim, compared to the brilliant earth's sun and the golden flame he himself had cast. He felt, when he opened his eyes, like he had turned blind until his eyes adjusted and he realized he must have, by the leaden feeling in his limbs and that slight taste to his breath, fallen asleep. He remembered where he was and swallowed the bitter taste of overwhelming grief. _We're going to wish them back,_ he told himself and shut off the part of his imagination that was synthesizing screams.

¤¤

Bulma saw Krillin walking through the throngs of people and disembodied souls and various creatures and otherworldly beings and straightened from leaning against the tree and relishing the shade. It wasn't actually _hot_ in Otherworld, but at least the yellow gaudiness of the cloud cover wasn't so bright when it streamed through emerald-colored leaves. A human, talking animatedly with a feathered biped who didn't seem to understand a word he was saying, looked up, affronted, as she shoved him away, bolting past him. Krillin, seeming lost in the crowds, looked back and forth furiously and seemed like he was about to pass her.

"Hey!" Three or four people looked over at her; the rest were still too far away or too engaged in another matter to be distracted by a single, short shout. Bulma yelled louder. "Hey! Krillin!"

The smaller human turned finally and paused, letting her catch up. Bulma was far from winded- you didn't get _winded_ in Otherworld- but she almost keeled over and panted from habit alone. "What are you doing here? Have anything about Dende or the others?"

The only other times Krillin- or Yamcha, depending on circumstance- had come to Otherworld from their training with King Kai had been when they'd gotten something from Dende to lead to an inference about Goku or Vegeta's conditions, or Frieza's location. Bulma's heart thudded painfully in her chest at the look on Krillin's face- somewhere between guilty and despairing.

"No news, Bulma. I don't think we'll get much news for a while." The leaden tone to his voice fell on her ears like heavy weights. For a long time, he didn't continue and she couldn't express her worry. The moment of silence between them stretched until it was unbearable and it began attracting the attention of the souls the way Bulma's shouting couldn't.

Finally, when she couldn't stand it any more, Bulma broke the silence. "Is Dende... dead?" The last word was almost choked on. Dende was almost as much a part of this little tangled family as Gohan was. She didn't see why, if Dende was dead, he wasn't here, unless... She didn't like to think about 'unless.' 'Unless' led to unpleasantness she didn't want to probe into.

"No." Somehow, the expression made it less of a relief than the negative should have been and compounded the sense of something _wrong._ It was out of place, _wrong_ did not exist in Otherworld. Krillin took a deep breath and continued, a little shakily. "He's stopped talking- telepathically- in coherent sentences. He's been... getting thinner all along, and he just broke about two days ago." The news was crushing; Bulma didn't ask what Krillin meant by 'getting thinner' or how he could measure two days when the yellow glow of the nimbuses above them was omnipresent and constant. She simply reeled in the revelation. Krillin kept going. "He refers to Kai as 'him' or 'God' and Ky'ale as 'her' or 'gold' and himself as 'he' or sometimes 'Dende' and he doesn't ever talk about Frieza. The one time he probed Kai ended up on his back with a hell of a headache." Krillin looked deflated, defeated; it wasn't at all like him and maybe that shook Bulma almost as much as the report. She worried her lip; they said that _despair_ did not exist in Otherworld but she felt it pressing against her, pressing her towards the earth with cold hands. If Dende was dead he would have come to Otherworld and 'lived' a more-or-less happy existence whether or not Goku managed to bring them back. But...

She swallowed, or at least tried to; her throat was completely dry. "He's..."

Krillin only shrugged.

It was almost funny, sort of, definitely absurd, that some little green kid who'd been so ridiculously mature for his size, so small and even cute, for an alien, could...

She was tempted to just, _not believe_ Krillin, because she couldn't picture it at all. But there was no way to phrase the question and she couldn't ask him whether or not he was joking and the silence that stretched between them suggested, perhaps, as impossible as it seemed, he was telling the truth.

Dende was part of their _family_...

Her tongue was a dry, dead weight in her mouth but she'd asked the same question every time one of the warriors had come to Otherworld. So she finished their conversation barely able to choke it out. "And the others?" Goku's life was vital to them returning, and whether or not Vegeta wanted to kill him his presence could certainly influence the end result.

Like always, Krillin shook his head, shoulders simultaneously rising and falling slightly. "No way of knowing," was all he could manage to hiss out before turning and returning towards the door that would take him back to Yemma and Snake Road.

_Our family. A planet of dead people, a violent alien, a schizophrenic feline, an idiot, and... a..._

Bulma watched him then lowered herself, slowly and deliberately, to sit on the too-green grass, pressing her fingertips into her eyes to try and stop the threat of tears, watched by a menagerie of curious souls who had long since forgotten the meaning of despair.

¤¤¤¤

Vegeta opened the door to the GR and strode out before Ky'ale, pausing for a moment once outside to let the great cat close the distance between them and shut the door with a hind paw. Goku, toying absently- and in vain- to solve a Rubric cube-like logic puzzle looked about as bored as the prince had ever seen him. And somewhat frustrated. His eyes were narrowed as he suddenly gave the toy a bit more attention and twisted it around in what appeared to be a fit of inspiration, a light crease appearing right above his almost-touching brows. He sighed in admitted defeat then looked up and flashed a smile in their direction, inching over on the couch to make room. Vegeta pointedly squelched any reaction the smile might have induced and let Ky'ale enthusiastically take the space on the couch that was obviously meant for the saiyan prince.

Collapsing bonelessly on the only other piece of furniture in the room, Vegeta drew the puzzle towards him with one hand wrapped around its corners and deftly twisted it, lining the colors up one by one. Goku bit his lip as the aligned cube hit the table, tossed underhand from the chair. Ky'ale nodded, seeming satisfied with something.

Goku's eyebrows skyrocketed. He'd been working for hours on that damn thing. He must had almost had it figured out. "How-"

"Ky'ale," Vegeta replied, shrugging. "She would get bored. She had pretty much every logic puzzle accessible to Frieza's empire figured out before we were finally let out to clean worlds." Goku nodded, his flinch at the reference to 'cleaning worlds' hardly perceptible. Times like these- times where the saiyan prince could make casual reference to destroying entire races for the money the empty planets would bring- were times when he realized, painfully, what he was getting into.

"So... she taught you?" He pushed the worry out of his mind. What happened in the past, was in the past. Vegeta, he was certain, regretted what he had done behind the emotionless veneer he showed the world. It was bland self-reassurance like that which helped him get by. He glanced over in the direction of the kairn; she appeared quite at peace, eyes half shut and talons crossed. He supposed she was meditating, she was somewhere in her mind, buried deep.

Again, the half-hearted shrug. "In a manner of speaking." Vegeta smiled, wryly, the same pained smile that, had he known it, Goku wore when he discussed Gohan. Slightly ironic, a little more... hurt. "I was very bored, as well." His gaze slid to his bodyguard. Her eyes were gently closed, and he could feel her mind racing on the edge of his own thoughts. One brow quirked slightly. She was talking to someone. Who?

Goku was frowning, studying the look on Vegeta's face. Not for the first time, sympathy scored through his heart. Vegeta had gone through tough times, in the past. He couldn't imagine-

Ky'ale's head jerking straight up snapped him from that particular reverie. Golden eyes opened suddenly, like sunrise in a heartbeat. Her cougar maw was slightly open.

"Ky'ale?" Goku asked, hesitantly. "Is something...?"

"Dende," Ky'ale replied, shortly, cutting off the question with its answer. "I've been talking to him, while you two have been having late-night training and wet dreams, so don't start, Vegeta." Her tone made the implication clear- if he could go around behind her back, so could she, his.

Goku was moderately surprised. She had never, ever insinuated that she could play the payback game with _Vegeta._ Anyone else, sure, revenge would be swift but painful. Vegeta...

Her next words came crashing down like nuclear bombs on his thought train. "Frieza's been torturing him."

"He's what?" Dende was so young... so innocent... He wasn't sure he could wrap his mind around it; sure, Frieza was evil- it was easier to try and kill him that way- but how could anyone, _anyone_, do that to a kid?

"He's been tortured. He's just gone off the edge." The words were bit off, forcedly apathic.

"Off... off the..." His mind stopped trying to wrap around the feline's words and they just bounced from his brain to the walls of his skull, not sticking to anything but unable to leave.

"Yeah, off the edge. He spent the past thirty seconds alternating from a shockingly scandalous narrative involving someone who I assume is King Kai by the description, and screaming for help into my mind." There was a moment of horrified, shocked silence. Then, as if they needed further clarification, Ky'ale said, in her terribly dry and blunt voice, "He's gone completely mad."

Gohan was dead, Chichi was no longer his one and only love, everyone he cared about was gone except for a sardonic cat and... Vegeta. Whatever Vegeta was. And now, Dende was... he was...

So young. So very, very young, even when he looked up and spoke and you wondered at his maturity, he was still so heartbreakingly young...

The world fell out from under him. He thought he might be falling, too, but he couldn't tell.


	14. Loud and Open Wounds

Chapter Three

Loud and Open Wounds

A/N: This, too, took a long time, notsomuch to write as to publish. I've been idling on this fic, because the part I'm on is kinda high-tension and hard to write. I like this chapter, though, despite that it's extremely short and, aside from some brief Vegeta character development, it's really nothing but a filler.

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It was... weird.

Alright, maybe weird was an understatement. Goku didn't know how else to put it. What position did he hold in Vegeta's life, anyway? One second, he would be the bane of Vegeta's life, someone who didn't matter and didn't help or influence anything. The next, they would be lying in the darkness and he would feel quiet hands carefully moving over his chest, a warm tongue against the side of his neck. Could he help it if he always stiffened, just a little bit? Not that he didn't like it, not that at all- which was kind of overwhelming, in its own way, that he didn't just like it but felt... well, felt like he did- but that this was the same guy who had just an hour ago had told him that his mourning for his son made him the biggest disgrace to ever call himself a saiyan. And Goku didn't remember ever _calling_ himself a saiyan.

But now, when they were alone- weird, too, how the absence of one person qualified a situation for 'alone'- and Goku had turned away, shaking just slightly, trying hard not to think about Dende, telling himself that it wasn't _his_ fault, that he hadn't failed the Namic, that he hadn't failed Gohan, that he hadn't failed Chichi. Okay, maybe he had failed Chichi. Maybe, in a way, he had failed Gohan. It was all so confusing. Why did he always find some problem he couldn't just fight his way out of, and why had he chosen Vegeta, of all the problems in the world? Well, now, when they were in the dark, obscured, he was suddenly not alone, was suddenly being carefully pulled into wiry muscled arms and... comforted?

No. Not comforted. This _was_ still Vegeta they were talking about. Right?

Well, did it matter? He wasn't alone...

"Hey," he groaned, feeling the wet warmth moving suddenly to his ear and pushing backwards. Vegeta, undeterred- the push hadn't really been meant to deter anything, anyway- simply laughed lightly, an oddly emotionless laugh but still, in some ways, pleasant, as his tongue delved into the cavity. Goku squirmed under it, twisting around the face the prince, kissing him lightly on the lips. "That tickled."

Something in the tone of his voice must have betrayed at least part of his thought train. Vegeta's ministrations slowed and cut off. He let the closed-mouthed, sexless kiss without protest, and waited. He wouldn't initiate the conversation, but there was at least a fifty-fifty chance he'd listen. Goku took it. He needed it.

"Dende," he said, quietly. Vegeta didn't respond, so the younger man continued. "Damn, it's my fault, isn't it? All of it? Dende, Gohan, Chichi, Krillin, Piccolo... All of them, and it's all my fault. I shouldn't have let them die."

He felt more than saw the saiyan prince shrug. "Your's and their's," he agreed half-heartedly. "They could have been strong enough to defend themselves, too, you know."

Goku looked away, though one foot of darkness looked about the same as the one before. The room had a little window but they weren't close enough to a star or planet to show anything in the room or outside but specks of light in an oval shape in the wall. "You can't blame them for something that happened _to_ them."

Again, the invisible shrug. "It's not always someone else's fault."

The younger saiyan sighed, tracing the glowing path of a faraway comet. "I should have been able to protect them."

"You couldn't. It's over. Protect them next time." It was obvious enough that to the saiyan prince the conversation had ended. Civic and moral duties were not Vegeta's favored topics of conversation.

"Dende's mad." Goku shuddered. He wanted to stop talking about it but he couldn't, not when it still haunted him like this. "I wonder what they did to him. I can't imagine it."

"You're better off."

Something in the prince's tone stopped Goku. "Did he ever... do anything like that... to you?" It was absurd but his initial reaction was that he should have protected Vegeta, too. He wondered what the Prince of All Saiyans would have had to say about that.

"No."

"Then how do you know...?"

There was a hesitation long enough that for a second Goku thought Vegeta wasn't going to respond. He was about to continue when the prince finally said, "Ky'ale did. She and I..." He didn't have to finish the sentence. Over the course of a few years, Vegeta would have been able to remember the experience as vividly as his counterpart.

"I'm sorry."

A third invisible shrug, felt against the mattress. "It's not my problem. Not now or ever." Wouldn't it be nice if that sort of thing worked? You could just decide what was your problem and what wasn't?

A blue star hovered near the left curve of the oval window. "Dende's a kid, though. Just a little kid. He doesn't deserve this."

There was a number of things Vegeta could have said to that. He could have said that it didn't matter to Frieza, that Vegeta had once seen him take four hours to murder a child for the simple reason that it screamed louder than its parents had. He could have said that Ky'ale had been young, a kitten, then. He could have said that kids snapped faster than adults, screamed everything their tormenters wanted to know, didn't understand what was happening or why it didn't stop. Could have told him, from past experience, how much easier undeveloped bones broke.

But he didn't. In the case of the last one, he... couldn't. He said only, "I know," and wondered, vaguely, whether he really did know or just wanted the conversation to end. He told himself the latter.

And then, by feel and intuition, he leaned forward and claimed Goku's mouth with his own.

The younger man's lips were cold, his whole body was cold, chilled with fear and worry. Vegeta pressed against him, arms coiling around his chest, and set to warming them again.

¤¤

The larger man's breathing slowed, became more and more regular, and finally took on the throaty tone of sleep, deep and quiet.

Vegeta was tired, too, tired and warm and content for the moment, and yet for some reason he couldn't sleep. He closed his eyes, and, though there wasn't enough of a change in light to be absolutely certain his eyes were actually closed, he knew they were because he could hear screaming, pained, panicking screaming echoing inside his skull. It wasn't Ky'ale's voice, or Dende's, or really anyone who had a name or who he knew- it was a myriad of various beings he had wiped out, on command or just for fun, over the years and years of his life. He closed his eyes and they screamed, he opened them and the cries of pain faded away.

They didn't surprise him. He had known one day they would be there, had known that they followed him around, waiting for the chance to haunt him. He hadn't known that when they finally decided to descend, he wouldn't be bothered at all by them, by the pain and terror apparent in their mingled, raw voices. He just couldn't sleep. They were too loud.

He knew it was a stupid thing to be scared of, but he didn't want anyone to hear them. That was the thing that most bothered him- that Goku would wake up and stare down at him, alarmed by the phantoms in his skull. And why did the younger saiyan's opinion matter, anyway? Vegeta didn't care what he thought.

_It's all my fault. I shouldn't have let them die._ Hadn't that been what the idiot had said, just a few minutes ago? Goku didn't know what it was like, to kill someone in cold blood, to kill someone who wouldn't have hurt you if you had just left them alone. The prince closed his eyes and listened for a second, remembering- a weird creature with six legs throwing its head back and wailing in despair as the sibling by its side, then it, were torn slowly apart. A blue-skinned child was _ground_ to death against the ground, smashed flat and scraped until there was nothing left but a dripping, lumpy smear. Vegeta tasted blood and realized he was biting his lip, hard- and still he didn't feel anything, not a single fucking thing. If he met one of the people he had killed in hell he wouldn't even apologize.

Goku had said it was _his fault_ but what did he know about killing people? Goku had never killed anyone who didn't fit into the black-and-white scale on the darkest tint of gray possible. He had never killed anyone who he wasn't justified for it. He had never had their voices return to haunt him and realize it didn't matter, because he couldn't even feel guilty, anymore- none of that mattered to him, guilt or pain or regret. All just a waste of time. He couldn't see someone being torn apart, bit by tiny bit, by his own command, hear their screeches, tune it out if it was too high-pitched and unpleasant. He couldn't remember all of that and feel absolutely nothing.

Vegeta's stomach tightened suddenly, compulsively, and he rolled out of the bed and staggered into the bathroom. After a few minutes of heaving until there was nothing left to throw up, he walked back into the main body of the ship. The lights were on, low, and the screen of the computer glowed dimly, but aside from that the ship was dark. The shadows obscured almost everything, the exception being the prone golden form on the couch and the controls under the LCD screen. He stood there and stared at his room, feeling... feeling...

...Tainted.

Not guilty, still not guilty. He still couldn't regret what he had done under Frieza. But he felt somewhat shaded, dirty, like he had a stain on his soul that he couldn't scrub off. And if that wasn't melodramatic enough, when he finally managed to move out of the hallway, into his room, beside the younger man who was already fast asleep, for one of the first times since they'd gotten onto the damned ship not twisting and moaning in his sleep with some sort of horrible nightmare- he felt better.

Not better, as in untainted, but better as in the rest of the world couldn't see it and wouldn't care. Like he had a shield...

"What are you doing to me?" he growled, half to Goku and half to whatever god was watching over his life. Neither answered. Vegeta lay on his side, facing the wall, back to the other, and closed his eyes. He ignored the screams and forced himself asleep.


	15. Yet Another Diamond Flaw

Chapter Four

Yet Another Diamond Flaw

A/N: Grrf. I dunno that I really like this chapter, but it's necessary. Yay for the height of Vegeta's dynamics!

--

It was two weeks after they'd taken off that they landed.

Neither Vegeta nor Ky'ale had ever been to the planet before; the yellow sand that seemed to cover a virtual new world with dunes and hills, basins and bowls and buildups, the scraggly, black-barked trees that sprouted crooked from the sand and spread leafless branches to cast narrow shadows in the shifting ground below, the red-orange boulders that spiked from the sand like the skulls of long-dead dragons. The air was regular temperature but horribly dry; breathing it in sapped the spit from Ky'ale's mouth and throat and it left Goku's eyes itching. You didn't have to feel power levels to pinpoint where Frieza was; the dry air seemed to fill with his scent, drip with dark energy even if you couldn't see it.

They could see it, though. That was the problem.

"Fuck," Ky'ale said, quietly. Vegeta nodded; the sentiment seemed to sum up the situation admirably. Goku sighed, braced against the ship, and ran his fingers slowly through the rough on her shoulders.

"Ky'ale?" She looked up at him, golden eyes wide. "When we get there... get the Dragonballs. Don't worry about Frieza, just grab Dende and summon the dragon."

"And if Dende...?" The question was hard to ask but it had to be put out there. Goku looked away but didn't answer so Ky'ale forced the rest of the words out of her mouth, summoning the apathy she'd been raised with. "...if he doesn't recognize me, or remember everything..."

"Just do what you can." Goku wouldn't meet her eyes. Ky'ale sighed- things were hard for him. He hadn't gotten over his wife, his son, his friends- who would? It had only been two weeks and trying to support both grief at their deaths and hope that they might be reborn had worn him down to the husk. Then Dende had gone, and he'd just... sort of collapsed. And there had been Vegeta, to both Goku's surprise and Ky'ale's, offering a bitingly sarcastic and grudging sort of pity. Even while inside he was railing at the younger saiyan's weakness he kept his mouth closed, sat still and half-listened, and far more enthusiastically offered a physical comfort that was taken advantage of as much as everything else. For a long time and for the life of him, Vegeta didn't know _why_ he was helping his rival. And then he figured it out, applied the appropriate excuse to the appropriate blank spot- he needed Kakarotto's raw strength to use against Frieza.

Needing to use someone was easier than needing their help. Needing to use someone was easier than caring whether they were hurting inside or caring whether they were having nightmares when they went absolutely still at night. Needing to use someone was easy. Vegeta knew exactly _how_ easy it was; he'd needed to use Ky'ale since he'd first met her, and it had become such an easy self-deception that he assumed it with Goku almost naturally.

"Alright. Let's go." Goku sounded like he was telling them to go propel themselves into space, to freeze and explode at the same time, to die horrible and painful deaths and extinguish themselves in one motion. Which, come to think of it, they almost were. Vegeta paused while Goku gathered power into himself and, in a surge of energy and golden fire, became the signature Super-Saiyan. The gap between himself and Frieza was smaller. It was still present, dark and gaping, empty. There was a hesitation while everyone drew the same conclusion, then Ky'ale screamed a half-roar war cry and surged forward.

Maybe Goku could compete with Ky'ale for speed, most of the time. But when she got worked up enough- no one could. She wasn't even a golden blur; she defied the light that tried to reflect from her. A misty cloud of sand chased behind her until she left the earth, flying, a furry little torpedo with a sickly powerful goal right in front of her talons.

Dende looked blankly up to the gray-green figure standing over him. Through the clouds of whiteness between his mind and his vision, he knew fear, but it was buried deep or out of his grasp; his immediate conscious knew nothing but a blurry sort of make-do existence, trembling with humor. "I will ask you again, Namic." Dende winced, even his conscious knowing a brief fluctuation of fear. The figure usually called him 'brat,' or 'bitch,' or 'pathetic;' when he was called 'Namic' things usually got a great deal more painful. He hated the word, hated it more than even the figure who spoke it. In his madness, he hated his own kind. "What is the password? Call the dragon! Use the Dragonballs!"

And then the moment of fear had passed and Dende let go a spurt of laughter aloud, shaking silently in mirth. _Dragonballs! Hahahahah! Balls!_

The whiplike tail slashed against Dende's ribs, but he barely felt it; what was that against ripping open his hand tendon by tendon, moving up his wrist, removing each carpal separately, mangling his arm, grinding the ulna against the radius until the blood vessels in the surface of the bone bled, then healing it in regen and starting all over again? Or just ripping it off and getting the Namic to regrow it? No matter what Frieza did, it could be healed or regrown. And so it never stopped. What did one little slap do? _Hahah! Balls!_

What was the password? Porunga, of course! Porunga Porunga, Porunga Porunga Porunga! No one knew it but him and he loved the irony of it. Why should he tell the figure Porunga? What more could the gray-green voice do, next to slowly driving needle-sized points of energy, burning like acid and fire, again and again through his gastrocnemius (largest muscle of the lower leg), then in the soft spot between his toes and heel, cutting through the flesh between the metatarsal slowly but cleanly. What more could he do? What more could anyone do? Porunga! It was his secret, all his; his his his his _his_. Porunga!

The figure started and jerked upright; Dende shook with laughter at his sudden movement. The scream started distant, then got close, very close, in the time it took the figure to curse. Dende laughed again, laughing at the curse, laughing at the scream even though his ears had started bleeding again. (A few days ago, his tormenters had taken to driving the same needles of yellow light into his ears, until they got far enough in that he was _almost_ in danger, then pulling it back, driving it back in, again and again, so rivers of lavender blood flowed down his face.) In its wake the scream left light, blood-red light that exploded in groups and clusters of Frieza's subordinates, those who weren't hit by the light bowled over by something else.

Familiar. He didn't know from where, but it was familiar.

"The Dragonballs!" The figure could have been screaming into air. He cursed and took off after the scream, but for all the impressive speed he himself could show, the scream had a head start. Dende watched with detached amusement as the slowly solidifying scream attacked the ship they had landed in, red light and white claws tearing through the metal; watched the gray one catch up to her and tear her away from it, watched the quick fight, watched the furry one be sent sprawling, watched seven holes being torn through the hulk of the ship as seven orange balls- _hah! Dragon balls!_- ripped skyward. Watched the figure attack the prone creature-scream, and watched another golden thing, even more familiar, naggingly familiar, what was it, what did it matter, come out of no where to her defense, catching the punch and giving another. Watched the orange spheres gather around the golden feline and watched her leave the battle silently, come catapulting- cat-apulting, a pun!- towards him.

Towards him.

Did she want his secret? Inside, he caved at the sight. She had the Dragonballs; she'd want the password, but it was his secret, his Porunga. He stumbled backwards, but it was futile; she'd landed right in front of him before he'd finished the step, gold-pupiled eyes wide, worried, mouth slightly agape.

_Dende?_ Familiar! He remembered the golden voice! _Dende! Come with me, now!_

_My secret! Mine!_

There was a pause, then her heavy head pressed against his chest. He stared down at it. The points of the curved horns would hurt if she drove them forward. The golden voice was quiet, almost gentle; too quiet, too quiet. _It's alright, Dende. You don't have to tell me. I know already. Come with me._

Go with her?

They stood there, quietly, until Ky'ale had judged it too dangerous; Frieza's minions had gathered almost three-hundred and sixty degrees around them, and she was out of time. Gathering the Dragonballs around her, she lunged forward, grabbed Dende's shirt in her jaw, and threw herself off the earth.

God. Too much of this and she was going to wear herself out. Still, it was either fly like all shit or get fried and she wasn't tired enough, yet, that the latter option should appeal. She folded her talons around the laughing-screaming Namic child's stomach, and flew.

Vegeta was the last to arrive. He told himself it didn't matter and for the moment it didn't.

Three of Frieza's men were flying after Ky'ale; they were already lost in the dust but he took them out anyway; a sharp kick to the spine, accompanied by a delightful snap, a simple clutch around the second's throat, even more simply ripping off the other's head. Killing had always come so easy, little life sparks squeezed away. For the simple reason that he was stronger than them.

Goku- Kakarotto- was fighting with Frieza, hair gold and eyes blue and a vivid yellow flame around him, pulsing with his own strength. They were surprisingly close to matched, strength-wise; Frieza was still stronger than Kakarotto but either the training on the ship had done more than Vegeta had thought it had or Frieza had gotten weaker and the former seemed far more likely than the latter. It was weird, in a way- this was far from the first time Vegeta had seen Goku- _Kakarotto_- as a super-Saiyan, and far from the first time he'd seen him fight. He knew that the younger saiyan was stronger than he was, he knew it in all accounts, by personal experience, by logical reasoning. He'd counted on that strength if any of the three of them were going to survive this. He'd bragged about it right before the first time Goku and Frieza had fought.

It was quite another thing, though, to know something and to see it thrown in your face. Vegeta had possessed two lives; one under Frieza's control and one as part of Kakarotto's 'team'; both times he'd been the subordinate under someone stronger than him, both times he'd been in second place. With Frieza, it was one thing; it was so easy to detach your self-evaluation from his, pretend like he was on another level of mortal speculation. With Kakarotto, it was... different. Very different.

Everything was different, now. The only thing was, the only thing that was still solid and unmovable- Vegeta was himself. If he didn't let it touch him, it didn't matter. He floated five feet above the earth, watching the fighters fifty feet over his head, watching blocked blows and the occasional punch or kick get past guard and send someone spiraling out of the feud for a moment. Frieza didn't go after Ky'ale; his priorities, that he needed the dragonballs and the Namic, were skewed somewhat with his determination of threat- that the kairn was, in comparison to the saiyans, threatening, in the same sense that Krillin would have been a threat in comparison to Frieza. Frieza didn't attack Vegeta because Frieza was fighting Goku. Vegeta was entirely out of the fight. Vegeta was separated. He didn't care.

Goku managed to get a good hit on the emperor's stomach and sent him flying a few feet away, and Vegeta felt a very apathic surge of victory. A bitter sort of pride. He hated that Goku was this much stronger than he was- so why was he relieved, even as he fought to feel nothing, that the saiyan was winning the fight? Accomplishing something Vegeta had always wanted to be able to do?

Why did he hiss with- not worry, not concern, gods keep him from worrying like a human war-widow- every time Goku was hit back, every time he faltered, every time he missed?

Because, the nasty thing called logic in the back of his mind told him, because you _do_ care. Because it does matter. Because you don't want for him to die, because you care about whether he dies, because you _care about him_...

_"You think too much," Ky'ale had once told him._

_"You go around in circles, don't you?" he'd answered ironically. "First I don't think enough, then I think too much. Which is it?"_

Frieza broke off their current engagement, threw himself backward, buried the folded knuckles of his foot into Goku's stomach. The saiyan folded over and Vegeta felt a flash of concern bunch inside of him. He was moving and he couldn't tell whether or not it was consciously.

_The cat had regarded him with her golden eyes, icily, then grinned. "You think too much, Vegeta. About the wrong things."_

If you can't tell whether or not something is done consciously, isn't it usually unconscious? Then why was he so intent, so determined, to keep moving?

_"And not enough about the right ones?"_

A yellow beam of energy shot from Frieza's palm into Goku's chest and the younger man, hesitating to block it, flew backwards into the earth in a puff of dust.

It had been a hard hit. For a second, Vegeta wasn't certain he was okay- then he felt his energy, faint but pulsing in the corner of his mind. He caught a glimpse of dark hair below him as he flew.

Frieza turned and took aim, then his finishing shot at Goku was broken by a foot crashing, hard, into his shoulder.

_The feline had snorted, folding her talons delicately, one over the other. "Not nearly enough."_

Frieza spun around and Vegeta suddenly wished very, very much that he had never learned how to sense power levels. Very much. Because suddenly sudden, instant death loomed right over him in gray-green skin and he had never realized ever before how mortal he really was. The yellow-green blast hurt before it hit because he knew it would hurt, because he anticipated it.

_Happy?_ he thought, demandingly, after the memory. _I didn't think at all, then._

He hadn't thought, he had reacted. He desperately scanned the nearby energies for the familiar pulse of the younger saiyan, and, finding it, didn't even have time to dodge the attack. It hit him full on his right side, bowling him over in midair. Taking a lesson from his bodyguard, he let himself be shoved aside by it, rolled over and burned, shoving aside the pain as only years and years of discipline could convince him to do. He took a deep breath, letting the pain go, letting his own pride slip away for just a second, just long enough to fall into his fighting-state, a crystal-clear state of mind. Just let everything go. Just let everything float away...

But he couldn't let everything go because he couldn't drop the sickening sense of dread and the constant mental straining to see the slow, faint pulse of golden energy that was Goku. That was Kakarotto.

_He's going to die_. It shouldn't have mattered. It really, really shouldn't have mattered except for the fact that it did, and the scene kept replaying in Vegeta's mind- both were fighting, both were fine, then Frieza threw himself back and kicked out, catching Kakarotto in the stomach, shot him in the chest, sent him reeling down to the earth, barely alive, barely breathing.

That was what Frieza did. He could kill people with one hit, when it looked like all odds were null. He did kill people, whenever he wanted, to prove he could or to prove he would. Vegeta had, more than once, as well; now he hated Frieza for doing something he himself had done.

"You're an idiot, Vegeta," the emperor drawled. "You couldn't stand the thought of not going first this time, could you? I really thought I had killed _you_, at least. You always were so weak..."

"Shut up." Not so much that the words hurt; once, maybe, but once Vegeta had cringed at everything Frieza had said. Over time, his insults had grown to meaning almost nothing. Now, he didn't want to talk, he wanted to fight. If he was going to die- and he was _going_ to die- he wanted to die fighting, not talking. Dammit! He was going to die and he was going to Hell and Goku was dying now and going to Otherworld; they were dying for the fucking _good_ cause, at least in retrospect, the against-evil cause if nothing else. Was this all the ceremony they got? No mourning song, no farewell speeches? Just fighting until both were gone?

Why did he care? He had never cared about ceremony before, had never cared about what his last words would mean, had never cared whether the person fighting next to him lived past the fight. Why now? Why did it suddenly matter? Why. Did. He. _Care_?

The energy that was Kakarotto flickered for a second, faint. He could imagine wry voices laughing quietly in his head. _No, seriously, Vegeta. This time, we're being straight with you. Seriously. Go for it._ The gods laughed uproariously, a laugh somehow made literal by the sadistic peals coming from Frieza's small, almost human mouth. _Did we actually _say_ that?_ they asked, incrediously. _Heh-heh! Our bad!_

"You're upset, Vegeta. Are you really that scared of death?" Unable to take the bastard's voice any more, Vegeta jumped forward through the air, managing to actually land a hit by surprise alone before being punched, hard, in the gut and lashed with the lizard's tail back, rolling through midair, to where he had stood. He grabbed madly for his equilibrium, swaying slightly where he floated, grabbing where the lizard's hit had met the burn from his first attack.

_No. _He was upset because... Because Kakarotto was dying. Because he couldn't do anything about it. Because he cared and he couldn't do anything about that, either. Because he was so, so, so, so fucking weak, and so fucking... dammit. So fucking worried.

And yeah, because he was about to die.

His eyes narrowed and he lunged forward again, ducking down and swinging the point of his boot at Frieza's hip. This time, however, the element of surprise was gone and his attack was smoothly caught, the prince dodging, barely, the counterattack that would have slammed the emperor's heel into his ribcage. He rolled over in midair and aimed an energy attack up at the lizard's face, forcing the bastard away from him so he could catch his balance again. Gods above, he hurt. He hurt to an extent most people can't imagine; the right side of his body felt numb, the left side dully pulsed with ache. But it didn't matter, so long as both sides kept moving. He was the Prince of all Saiyans, and he couldn't be deterred by pain.

_Only by low-bred idiots pretending to care for long enough that you actually start to believe them..._ He fought to detach himself from that, fought to keep from thinking about it but like a burr, or like the saiyan himself, it refused to come undone.

He lurched forward again, unrelenting offense, and was beaten back in a total of thirty seconds, clutching now the still-smoking ruin of his right shoulder. He floated for a second, trying to collect himself enough to try again and wondering why it mattered. Why couldn't he just stop fucking trying? He wasn't going to win. He couldn't win. He didn't stand a fucking chance.

But he knew the answer to that. It mattered because it Mattered. He cared because he Cared. He couldn't just give in to the inevitable any more than he could just shrug off giving a shit, no matter how much it hurt, no matter how close it came to pushing him over the edge. Not because he wanted it to matter, not because he wanted to care- but because it did, because he did. Fuck it all, but he hated fate.

Frieza gave him a speculating look and again tried the hard-worn 'before I kill you' speech. "No, it isn't because you are particularly scared of death, Vegeta- either that, or you're being a fucking idiot. Then why do you look so wrought-up?" And why did he give a shit? But wouldn't that have been hypocritical to ask? "You don't really believe these people, Kakarotto and the humans, that I shouldn't hurt people and every race should live in peace and harmony for the rest of eternity?" A wry smile stretched the emperor's cold face.

"No," Vegeta responded coldly; no matter what else had changed he no more believed in absolute peace than Ky'ale believed in veganism. "I just want you to die." And that was partly true but in no way the entire truth; he jumped forward and threw a beam of white energy that Frieza easily dodged, slashing out with his two-toed feet.

"I don't believe that, Vegeta. You don't have a chance to kill me, you know- why are you fighting me?" And then black eyes trailed over to the spot where trained eyes could make out a faint flame of golden energy and Vegeta felt his stomach fill with lead as Frieza figured it out. "Unless... you aren't scared of your _own_ death." And then, like that was the funniest thing in the world, Frieza grinned, manically, and glared down with obvious intention at the pale flame he couldn't see but in numbers on his power-scan, on the ground.

Something bitter and vile-tasting caught in Vegeta's throat. He thought it might have been panic. He couldn't have been panicking, actually panicking, over someone else. Could he?

His body was doing that same thing it did, when it moved forward without him telling it to, aiming a punch at Frieza's head. It was caught, easily, in the silver-metal hand of his enemy- a hand that was already starting to glow. The energy pulsed over both their arms, Frieza's and Vegeta's, growing painfully warm as they floated still in stalemate for the fraction of a second the emperor took to get ready.

Then the beam burst in a throbbing, pod-like motion from Frieza's hand and flew down towards the pale flicker of Goku.

This time, Vegeta's subconscious didn't get a chance to act because Vegeta's conscious mind had already done it. He coursed down, eyes trained on the blazingly bright pod of energy, straining every muscle in his body to catch up to it. Fury, worry, pain; other emotions he didn't recognize and couldn't articulate rose like sudden, aimless fire, overwhelming him, snapping something inside of him. A burst of speed came from somewhere inside of the maelstrom of emotion, strange and raw feeling, that his insides had become, and he slammed his shoulder into the pod of light, pushing it off course.

It hurt, but not as much as it should have. Everything seemed distanced besides the burning urgency to move the damned attack- and the rhythmic pulse of the fire inside him, moving outward from inside, threatening to overwhelm him with a rush of heat and light until all he was became ash.


	16. Dragons and Saints

Chapter Five

Dragons and Saints

A/N: Yay for reviews:D Okies... The thing about this chapter is, things get suddenly a lot better... and then suddenly a lot worse. () Last chapter was the height of Vegeta's development until the very end, so we can expect a little relapse until then.

And I think this is a big enough chapter to be worth the wait.

¤¤

"Are you alright?" For a second, golden clouds and green grass blurred into one big smudge the color of mint gum, which was suddenly, rudely intruded upon by a strange tan smudge. Six white dots flashed tan, then white again, and slowly the two sets of three merged with each other, settling into a single set of three wide eyes.

King Kai brushed away the waiting hand and stood up on his own, shaking his throbbing head. Had he just collasped? Alright, it had never been easy to look down at faraway mortal-world planets via telepathy, and it had never been easy to have people looking with him, and more than one or two had always been damned hard, and the half-dozen gathered around him- Tien, still hovering over him, Yamcha, moved off a little, Piccolo, off to the side, Krillin, almost pressed against him for another chance to see what was going on, Choat-zu, a little off, looking preoccupied, and Puar, attached to Yamcha's shoulder- had always taken a lot out of him. But had he honestly just collapsed?

He was getting _old_.

"I'm fine," he snapped back. "Stand back for a second, I'm going to try to find them again." He had fallen over when... When Goku had been knocked out of the air, that was it. Kaioshin, Goku! Was he dead? No, of course he wasn't dead- King Kai would know if he had come to Otherworld. Right? Well, that didn't matter- well, it did matter, but he would find out whether or not the saiyan was alive soon- because right now he had to try and get his mind to go... just... a... little...futher...

A flash of energy floated into his concious, a blurry image of a saiyan that wasn't Goku fighting a lizard that was Frieza. Then that faded away. "Damn," he muttered under his breath. "I can't see."

"Take off the sunglasses," Krillin remarked dryly.

"Shut up," Piccolo growled down at him. The namic looked over at his sensei and frowned. "So, you have no idea what's happening?"

The kai started to shake his head, then shrugged. "Vegeta's fighting, which means Goku didn't get back up. That doesn't look good."

"Vegeta's not strong enough to kill Frieza," Yamcha said, earning a glare from Piccolo for stating the obvious.

"I don't know if I like having my life in Vegeta's hands anyway," Krillin said to no one.

Tien shrugged. "I trust Vegeta more than Frieza."

"Which'll sure matter when Frieza annilhates him!"

"I do, too! But trusting someone more than Frieza isn't exactly the highest honor in the world."

"Hey, at least someone-"

"Do you all have any POINT?" King Kai had a high, fatty voice, but when he spoke, people shut up and listened. Being a god did that to people, he guessed. "I'm trying to concentra- Baba!" He spun around fast enough that if anyone had been close enough after his outburst the whiplash from his antennae could have bowled them over.

If there had ever been an ideal time for a short, wrinkled, ugly lady with an attitide problem riding on a floating crystal ball, this was it. Or, rather- if there was ever a time for a floating crystal ball, this was it. The woman on top was unfortunate, but the crystal ball was worth her presense.

Baba Yaba floated closer to their little circle, hovering maybe a foot off the ground. "I figured with all these idiots around you, you might need some help, South."

King Kai pouted. Baba was never one to respect her deities- but in this condition, she was really very useful. "It would be appreciated," he said, trying to sound meek. The witch looked at him for a second, as if doubting his sincerity, then the crystal began to glow.

Deep within the sphere, a massive beam of energy shot for the ground. Vegeta shot for it, slamming into it with his shoulder.

"What the fuck is he doing?" Yamcha managed, the only one to break the silence. Everyone else was holding their breath- though the question made sense; why would Vegeta run for an attack that was going to miss him? Did he _want_ to die?

The perils of watching a fight near the end, Kai guessed- because this was definitely near the end, there was no way in hell the saiyan could survive that, his shoulder was already pressed against the light and he was shoving himself against it like he didn't know it was killing him.

He wasn't quite screaming but he was definitely yelling out, pushing against the beam of energy. He looked up and almost seemed to catch their eyes through the crystal. His pupils looked weird.

Then a flash of golden light shone suddenly through the stone. Light like being inside a star. It poured liquid from the stone, and there was a loud snap as a crack split down the center of the sphere.

¤¤

It was like being burned alive.

Well, techincally, he _was_ being burned alive. He was surrounding himself with energy, and heat, with light, was one of the many things being given off. Heat enough, by the force of the energy, to melt skin, boil flesh while he was still breathing, sublime bone. Heat enough to vaporize him in miliseconds.

So why was he still alive?

He opened his mouth and gasped in air hot enough to burn his tongue, but that pain was nothing like the pain all around him. The pain inside of him, a pulsing fire that kept growing even as he tried to move away from the energy outside. He pulled away from the attack, inch by inch, until he floated, free, in midair and it continued its course down to the earth, thirty or forty feet away from its target. Awesome. Now Goku had thirty seconds to wake up, heal, and kill Frieza before Vegeta died and Frieza killed the last living saiyan. The prince cursed his own stupidity.

The energy beam had dragged him down a couple dozen feet with its course, and though it was gone the pain lingered. It had, somehow, traversed across his skin, it burned him alive from the inside, fighting out. He doubled over for a second, crying out, his hands half-clenched like claws, knuckles white. He closed his eyes, opened them again, closed them again. Why was he taking so long to die?

Yellow fire, golden fire, traveled with a flare across his skin and the stray thought occured- unless he wasn't dying.

Another flash of painful heat, and then it was gone. Not entirely gone, no- his shoulder was still burned and it still throbbed and he still had a myriad of bruises, but all not-ignorable pain was gone, and he could slowly straighten, slowly catch his breath. Breathing was easier. So was straightening. So was moving in general. So was floating in place.

In fact, everything was easier to do. It was easier to scan his conciousness over the gathered energies and see Goku, still alive, Frieza, hurt by his two fights- the first more than the second, but Vegeta didn't really confirm that to himself- Ky'ale, still running like shit, and... and himself.

He couldn't think it to himself, at first. It had happened too suddenly and he was still in a sort of half-shock, staring into space, fighting the urge to start poking his face, clarifying that he was still real.

It was Ky'ale whose job it was to state the obvious, her 'voice' skirting over her mind, her 'eyes' obviously keeping tabs on the fight. _"Vegeta..."_ There was a short pause, then her voice returned half-laughing in a sort of triumphant glee. _"Holy shit. You're a super-saiyan."_

It had either been the blonde hair, blue eyes, fire or sudden increase in power but somehow, Frieza had come to the same conclusion. Vegeta was too far away to hear the exact words but by the motions of the emperor's mouth, it was obvious that Frieza was not happy with the situation. They were actually close in power, Frieza still having more- but they were both injured. And Vegeta still had two sensu beans.

It was time for a slow and cheerful bout of revenge. Vegeta had, all his life, wanted to hear the lizard scream, for once.

¤¤¤¤

Ky'ale dropped Dende as gently as it was possible to drop a thrashing namic while moving eighty miles an hour over a stretch of sand. The sand was soft and the kid was tough, though, he wouldn't die. She landed herself, right in front of the ship they'd landed in, maybe two hours ago, in a manuver that would have stubbed every one of her talons had it been done on rock, and dropped her telekinetic hold over the dragonballs, letting them fall all around her with little whispers of displaced sand.

_"You okay?"_ she asked her passenger, half-heartedly.

_"Go away,"_ he snapped back.

Fine with her. She pushed the dragonballs into a little knot and sat in front of them, regarding them coldly. The plan was easy. Wish one- Piccolo back to life. Wish two- earth back to life. Wish three- wish Vegeta immortal. It was compromise. It was not compromise most of Goku's friends would agree with, but it was definitely compromise. But what about Dende?

God dammit, why hadn't they thought of a single back-up plan for what to do with Dende?

She was almost too tired to deal with it, right now. She had just flown faster than she thought anyone had ever flown before in the history of movement, taken out four or five of Frieza's quicker cronies in midair without slowing down, dragging a thrashing namic in her claws and seven massive spheres all around her, listening to a constant drabble of nonsense the first peice of her cargo. She was about ready to collapse, or at least just let Dende run mindless into oblivion. But sometime over the course of two weeks, she'd become a bleeding heart. With a deep sigh, she lurched forward and trapped the kid beneath a talon.

Golden eyes blazed as she tried to enter the namic's mind... then burned to opaque again as she got no reaction. She tried again, and again, looking for that tendril of person inside Dende's mind. Vegeta and Frieza kept fighting. Vegeta had the upper hand, which based on past experiences meant Frieza was about to do something drastic- she didn't have time for all of this, she had to make her wishes.

So where would Dende come in?

The thing about Porunga was that, like many dragons, he tended to look for holes in wishes, then proceed to rape the wishes through those holes until they were torn, bleeding masses of what the wish had been. If you wished Piccolo 'back to life,' he would stay up there in Otherworld, lacking a halo. If you wished him 'here,' he'd be stuck across the planet from you, or somewhere on a moon. And then Chen Ron would still be gone if the earth wasn't back. To get their last wish, Piccolo had to be back and the world had to be back. That left only one vestigial wish, and it was the last one Ky'ale was willing to give up. So what would they do about Dende?

Let everyone die so Dende would be fine? Let Dende lie there like that, screaming curses into her mind?

_"Porunga,"_ she told the dragonballs, half-heartedly watching as the massive lizard stretched out of the glowing spheres. Dende cried out inside her mind and she ignored him.

_"You have three wishes,"_ he said, his voice reverberating across her skin.

_"I know," _she replied waspishly, casting a nervous glance over her shoulder at where Dende was struggling to get his legs to work long enough to stand. First wish up, no turning back. It was all about phrasing, she could make two wishes into one. She hoped. _"I wish Piccolo was alive and here. And to define 'here,' I mean exactly three feet and four and a half inches to my left. Now. Please."_

And, with a large, gracious nod from the massive dragon, a Piccolo-shaped cloud of air was promptly displaced and replaced with the namic. The kairn stared at it, not quite sure she could ever get used to the _suddenness_ of magic.

Piccolo, on the other hand, spent a couple seconds just standing, eyes going wide. He looked a little surprised, looking from Ky'ale, who stood with her hackles up to her ears, glaring up at Porunga, to Dende, who stared soullessly back at him.

_"You have one wish remaining,"_ Porunga was saying.

_"What? No, fuck it!" _Small rocks rose a few feet off the ground around the kairn then exploded in red light and puffs of dust. _"That was one wish!"_

The massive dragon almost seemed to shrug. _"You wished him alive, then you wished him here. Two wishes. What's your last one; I'm not a particularly patient dragon."_

"Ky'ale, what the hell is going-"

"Shut up, Piccolo." Then, to the dragon, _"Can I undo the second part?"_

_"You can, but it would count as your last wish."_ He sounded amused. Ky'ale wasn't. A growl shivered through the air, and it would have been menacing had it not been aimed at a monster about three hundred times her size. She was briefly reminded of when she was a kitten and she tried to threaten Frieza.

"Give me a second," she said to the dragon and two namics at once. _"Vegeta! We have a problem!"_

The saiyan's voice was taut, a little stressed, a little distracted. _"What is it, Ky'ale?" _

_"Piccolo counted as two wishes. The earth, the namic, or you, Vegeta? If I don't get Dende healed, he might not last another year; we might never get Porunga back again and we wouldn't have the earth, so no Chen Ron, and the people who have died before won't come back. If we don't wish the earth back then we have to wish it back next year or we won't get Chen Ron back and we'll be wishing humans back one by one for the next two billion years."_ She let out a long breath. _"If I don't wish you immortal before bringing the others back you might not be able to ever get it. We have _Kakarotto_ outvoted."_

There was a pause; either Vegeta was thinking it over or fighting, probably the latter. The tension in his voice made it obvious that she was right. _"You _know_ which one _I_ care about, Ky'ale!"_ he snarled, loudly, a little too angrily, into her mind. _"Just do it!"_

_"But, Vegeta..."_ paused while he cut her off, concentrating on his fight. She wanted him to make the decision for her but she wanted him to make the right decision for her. _"He's... just a little kid."_

The exact same words Goku had used. Had she known how close that was to emotional manipulation, she would have rephrased, but she didn't and that was too bad.

Vegeta didn't want to care. He never had. And that was too bad, too, because regardless of what he wanted, he did.

_"Just do whatever you fucking want then, Ky'ale,"_ he snapped, angry with himself for continuously giving a shit and angry at her for bringing it up, and cut himself off from her again with an imagined snap.

The cat reeled back, her talons clenching and unclenching. It hurt when her prince did that, not literally but emotionally- but she didn't have time for that. The dragon looked impatient- which was odd, given that once the final wish was made, he'd be trapped asleep again. One would think he would enjoy the reprieve.

And she didn't have time for this, either.

_"I wish..."_

Piccolo cut her off, his fist tightening around her horn. "Ky'ale. What the fuck is going on? I can't let you make Vegeta..."

And somehow, that sealed it; the kairn's hurt at the saiyan's serverance and the Namic's attempts to force himself into where he did not belong somehow pushed her over the edge. Frieza was still more powerful than her prince and they were still fighting on the edge of her conciousness, always just hovering on the positive side of victory for the evil half. Her vision blurred slightly and she could no longer see Dende, cowering off at the side. "Fuck _off_, Piccolo. Porunga-" speaking aloud to the dragon sounded hollow, empty. "I wish Vegeta was immortal."

Piccolo had tried to stop her at the last second but deep inside maybe he knew that he couldn't; he could hold her muzzle shut but he couldn't stop her telepathy if he tried. Nor could he stop her from gutting him and he was pretty sure, by the odd dullness of her eyes, that she would have.

The dragon stared back and them, said nothing, then grinned and shrieked, loudly, senselessly. Behind them, Dende was laughing, which was somehow frighteningly absurd; this little kid with stubby green antennae laughing like... like _he_ was the enemy, like _he_ was the evil one.

Ky'ale screamed, a feline but female scream, backing away as Porunga began to thrash back and forth, the _power_ emanating from him enough to set her fur on edge. He was more powerful than anyone she had ever felt, more than Frieza, more, she was sure, than King Kai; he was made of power, made of energy, not a god but a planet, not mortal but somehow everlasting, eternal.

"He's mad! He's gone mad!" Piccolo had never before sounded so panicked, almost hysterical, and his companions didn't blame him; this massive titan was still swaying back and forth, screaming louder than anything they had ever heard.

Ky'ale didn't need to but she couldn't stop the sarcastic snarl of, "Thanks, Captain Obvious" from escaping her maw, it was the only way she could manage releasing the sudden flurry of fear. The roars bellowing steadily from the dragon's throat suddenly slowed down, though Dende's laughter only grew louder; or maybe it seemed to grow louder because she could finally hear it. The dragon's life and mind were connected to his guardian but at the same time he was individual, seperate; he flashed between sanity and insanity like a high-speed movie, curling around himself with regal dignity then surging like a snake, growling down at the Namic then screaming in wordless, half-remembered pain.

At last, he tensed, like a dead lizard left to stiffen in the sun, and stared down at Ky'ale, catching golden eyes, drowning her in a sea of ancient, endless black.

The dragon was mad. Somewhere inside its mind it was reliving everything that had been done to its Guardian; somewhere deep within himself Porunga was losing a mind a million years in developing. Somewhere in the dragon's soul there must have been a hatred for Ky'ale that was so thick it was palpible, a hatred that would be mirrored by Dende if Dende still had a soul to think with.

Why the hell had she done? What had she managed to destroy?

_Just do whatever you fucking want, then, Ky'ale._

_"It is done._"

¤¤¤¤¤¤

Not enough. Not _enough_.

Vegeta felt like screaming, like falling to the earth and pulling at his hair and screaming until he couldn't hear himself think, rubbing his throat raw until he couldn't feel the fist slamming into his side, the fire of energy blazing past his skin, the careful and meticulous shattering of his own pride. He wanted a distraction from it all, he wanted to turn away, wanted to give in to whatever it was that was overpowering him, that was forcing him down. But he couldn't give in, could he?

Out of the corner of his eye he saw a broken saiyan body with a broken human heart lying on the ground and knew, no matter what he wanted he couldn't.

And so he let it come. He braced himself, the gold fire around him flaring for a second, a shock of yellow light across his face, and gathered his own attack, ready to spring back if he could only dodge a little to the left, now, _now_...

But somehow, he couldn't move fast enough. Hadn't the emporer always been faster, anyway? He almost laughed ironically as the heat and light sunk in, his own beam flying wide. It hurt, but did that even really matter? Everything hurt. He was falling backwards, nothing to catch him, falling, falling, falling...

He landed with a soft _whumph_ and a cloud of dust around him and coughed, and coughing sent spasms of pain down his spine, waiting for the second time that day for death to come. Why was he coughing, anyway? Why wasn't he dead? Maybe he was dead, maybe this was hell, reliving it, watching Frieza kill Kakarotto, Ky'ale, everyone, everything. Lying here in pain.

Maybe he was dying, but it was taking a long time.

Maybe he wasn't going to die.

Maybe he _couldn't_ die.

He forced himself to his feet and gasped as blood seeped out of him, but his eyes widened when his feet responded to every command of his mind. He was moving forward. He was alive. He was immortal. And it hurt like all hell.


	17. Grayscale

Chapter Six

Grayscale

A/N: I love the way this story ends. XD Yeah, it's almost done, writing-wise (Still haveta write the epilogue, though) but I LOVE the end of the last chapter. Makes me go squee. Heheh.

And for those who don't know- I love dream sequences. I'm horrible at them, but damn I love them. XD

¤¤¤¤

It was gone.

Porunga was gone.

The dragonballs glowed with a faint orange light that sent a stripe of yellow fire down Ky'ale fur and then hardened into spherical stones, flying out randomly, spiraling across the world. Piccolo stared after them in disbelief, wondering- that _could_ be the last chance of the earth being brought back. That one motion of seven stones flying through the air could very well symbolize the last time he ever saw his friends, it could show Dende being gone forever or... or...

He turned and stared at the kairn, at the feline creature he had once almost considered a friend, or at least closer to it than the saiyan.

...or the death of a golden cat.

She must have seen where his thought train was going- if she was in his head he would kill her, he didn't care right now, he would kill her were she stood- because she slowly stood up, ears pressed back, flat against her skull, the tips gracing her horns. "Piccolo."

"You killed him." He couldn't help it; anger rose like bile in the back of his through and he could taste it against the roof of his mouth. He gestured like a madman himself at the smaller Namic that had been almost a younger brother to him, the _child_ who reminded him so much of Gohan. "You know that, don't you? You _killed him_."

Those brilliant gold eyes closed and when they opened, they were dull and flat, a brownish-yellow instead of gold. "I know."

"Do you? You _know_?" His upper lip drew unconsciously over the pointed fangs on either side of his upper jaw. "You _know_?"

_A voice just like her own screamed something she knew she didn't want to say, and she was unable to close her own mouth, the muscles would no longer obey. They had been trained by pain to listen to the will of someone other than her... Oh god, the pain. Vegeta made the pain come, Frieza made it go away, the loyalties were all twisted until she wasn't sure she wanted control over her mind anymore. _"I _know_, Piccolo."

Some of the anger seeped out, but he still retained enough to tower over the cat, meeting her eyes with his own, burning black. "You know. Then why did you do it?"

She snapped back, a spring stretched straight and then released; her voice growled slightly, hissed with a strain on communication. "Because I...!" Because she what? Because she didn't care about Dende, at least not next to Vegeta? Was that really it? She couldn't get out what she wanted to say so she snarled and tossed her head back and forth, the powerful horns ripping through the air. "...I..." Only after another few seconds had she calmed down enough to actually speak, slowing the random motions of her head and slowly looking up. Her talons were clenching and unclenching spastically. "...My loyalties belong to Vegeta."

It was calm and cold and shockingly fake-sounding and like cold water it stopped Piccolo in his tracks, killing the irrational anger with something measuredly rational and cool.

A stray giggle escaped from Dende's mouth.

¤¤¤¤

The crystal ball was split in two, cleanly, like some sort of god of gods had sawed it clean with a butter knife. Each side was fluctuating madly through a rapid-fire series of images- as Krillin watched, the left half blazed through a short flickering showing a large dinosaur walking through a broadleaf forest, a three-year-old kid throwing a tantrum in a mall, a volcano, possibly Mt. Vesuvius, erupting in a spray of magma, a raccoon waddling through a cave, chewing a still-living infant bat. A throbbing light that could have been the birth of the sun. A fiery burst of color that could have been the end of the earth.

Baba Yaba knelt in front of her stone, looking like she was about to cry. Her hat was tilted and she didn't even reach up to fix it; Choat-zu eventually straightened it out, gently, his white face drawn with concern. She didn't react to the child clown at all.

"Baba?" King Kai's thick voice dripped with concern. He cleared his throat and started over. "What happened?"

"Are you all right...?" Tien ventured, nervously.

The witch looked up with a jerk, eyes suddenly blazing. Tien stepped back. "Of course I'm alright," she snapped, grabbing the two sides of the crystal and pressing them together. The fluctuating images gradually synchronized- though the right side still moved through them slightly faster. "I'll need to repair this. Be patient, it won't take long."

"What the hell was that?" Yamcha asked, slightly nervously.

Before King Kai or Baba could answer, Puar said, quietly, "Where's Piccolo?"

The Namic had been sort of lurking, out of the group, when he'd disappeared. King Kai squeezed his eyes shut, focusing on the image of the namic- and saw him, a little faintly and overlaid with gray, in his mind's eye, arguing animatedly with Ky'ale.

"Hey! Piccolo's alive! They must have wished him back!" Or, more accurately, Ky'ale must have wished him back, given that Goku was, the last time he'd checked, still out cold and Vegeta was fighting for both of their lives. Still, if Ky'ale and Piccolo could catch Frieza before he got back to heal the damage the saiyans had done, they might have a...

A hand tightened on his shoulder, and the image flashed white and vanished. King Kai rounded on Yamcha with a growl.

¤¤¤¤

Somewhere in his mind, torn apart by pain and hounded by fever, Goku knew it was a dream. On the other hand, the less skeptical parts of his mind argued, how on earth could one feel pain like this, tightening around every muscle, driving stakes of fire through every inch of skin, in a dream...?

He pressed his forehead against the cool walls of his house back on earth but the metal of the spaceship's curved hull only caught the heat from his skin and reflected it back. It hurt. Where was he, anyway? Chichi was setting the table and Ky'ale was doing the dishes; Gohan was bent over a Geometry book and Vegeta was hovering over him, cynically pointing out the errors in his weak, half-breed math. All of these had never happened simultaneously before and they had never happened in one place, in a small house with a tiny, rectangular kitchen and a re-gen tank where perhaps the bathroom should have been. A metal house with stone walls that could never seem to make up its mind on whether or not it was actually a spaceship.

But what about him? He had a function to play, too, while Ky'ale cooked and Chichi cleaned; he had something he had to do. So while they did that and they finished with their lives, he fought Frieza; it was what he did, it was what he was meant to do. They left Goku's home and the spaceship floated just outside where it would be relevant and Goku threw himself at the emperor, felt the attacks bludgeon him, felt his own strength evenly matched, spark for spark, fiber for fiber. Maybe he had finally met his match, maybe they would just fight forever, never finish it, never let one or the other win. Maybe this was just... Forever.

And then there was a small, warm body in front of him, facing away from him, and his face was buried into dark hair once again. A fist, covered in red blood, emerged from Vegeta's back with a sickening crack and for a long time it was all Goku could look at. A fist protruding right through Vegeta's torso. Frieza's fist dripping Vegeta's blood.

Then the saiyan prince's hands came up and pressed against the lizard's face and blew the damned bastard's head into a million burning pieces.

He had a hole in his chest that a small cat could comfortably fit in, and he didn't seem to mind, floating there in midair, a weird and familiar grin on his face. The first few punches, not at Frieza's falling body but at Goku's beaten one, were meant to miss, challenges, threats. _Come on. I'm finally stronger, Kakarotto. I'm finally stronger._

_Does it matter? Frieza is gone._

For a second there was no response, then there was a terrifying rush of sound and light and a million yellow birds of light energy rushed past Goku, barely missing or grazing his extremities. _Of course it matters!_ His voice was frenzied, insanely furious._ I'm the stronger one, Kakarotto. Me, not you, ME YOU FUCKER!_

There was no change in the amount of physical pain Goku felt and even in the dream he was too tired for the emotional to hurt him much; shaken, he floated in front of Vegeta. _You_, he ceded without fight.

_Fight me._

It wouldn't be a spar. It would be a fight. Goku didn't want to fight him, and it hurt that the prince did, not physically and perhaps not even emotionally because he hadn't reached a state of waking that emotions hurt, and yet it did hurt, somehow. A real right, a fight to the death.

_No_.

There was real anger in Vegeta's voice when he replied, anger that even in the dream was shaking. _Why not? Why won't you fight me?_

Goku only sighed and ran fingers through his hair, the stretching of his muscles burning paths of fire down the skin. _Because I love you._

It was the wrong answer. Vegeta sprang for him, eyes wide and arms stretched out, ready to tear his lover to pieces only to prove he could. He was stronger, he _was_, _he _was, him, him, him, him, him. HIM. And yet, his voice was strangely detached, separate, calm, as he said, _There's no such thing._

And Goku could only watch him through filmy eyes as he told himself, yes, there is. He knew because he felt it, for the first or perhaps the second time, stronger than he ever had before. "There _is_ such a thing," the unconscious saiyan murmured aloud to no one, because there was no one around.

¤¤¤¤

Ky'ale could feel the dim spark of Vegeta and wondered how much longer he could protect Goku. She knew she didn't have to worry about her prince- did she? What did 'immortality' entail, anyway? Did it merely mean that you could tear him into a million tiny pieces and those tiny pieces would still contain flecks of Vegeta's consciousness, flecks of intelligence too torn apart to matter? She didn't think she wanted to know, she thought maybe she just wanted both Vegeta and Goku to heal and then they could kill Frieza together and in the end, maybe everything would work out. Maybe everything would be better again.

"We have to go," she told Piccolo, turning away from the Namic kid she'd been guarding. "We have to help them."

"Why? Vegeta's immortal, now!"

The cat's ear flicked violently, and she held down a snarl by willpower alone, her talons clenching in the dirt. "Dammit, Piccolo, look at them!" Neither could technically 'see' either one of them but the Namic knew what she meant and felt for the prince's power, sensing it waning but staying stubbornly lit. "Immortal doesn't mean unbeatable. And if Frieza knocks him down he can still kill Goku!"

"And why do you care about _that_? You're loyalties are to Vegeta, aren't they?" It was one of the few situations that doubtlessly called for sarcasm. "Goku can die just like Gohan, just like Dende, just like everyone else..."

"Dammit, Piccolo, I don't have _time_ for this!" How the hell could she explain the whole damn thing to the Namic when _she_ wasn't entirely sure she understood? "Later, I'll tell you why I care about it, and I'll spend all day explaining it to you and we can have tea, but not right now because right _now_ I have to do something about it. You're invited to come if you want but if you'd prefer to sulk I grant you full permission to do so." _Damn_, but these people did _nothing_ but talk; they talked when they were fighting, they talking before fighting, they talked when other things needed to be done! Without looking back, she leapt forward, pulling ahead into the air. Her mind strayed from her own flight to Vegeta and Goku, being slowly beaten down by the far more powerful Frieza, though he was dented, as well, and she caught fragments of thought and feeling through her link with her Prince.

_Hold on, Vegeta. Just... I'm almost there._

It was one of the longest flights she'd ever done, time dragging on endlessly, while the saiyan prince was slowly torn apart and Goku lay helpless on the ground. By the time she saw them as pinprick she was moving faster than she'd ever moved before and less than a second after that she was on top of them, talons out, hitting Frieza with all of her weight and all of her speed. The two of them flipped out, spiraling heads over talons over tails, her claws and teeth tearing into him, a shrill shriek of frustration bubbling out of her. In the maelstrom of light and image she saw Vegeta, hovering torn apart but in more-or-less one piece, watching her with his head lilted to one side.

And then the emperor floated away and she smelled burning in the palm of his hand. She fought towards him, red light pouring from her jaws in her own attack, but while she had always been faster than Vegeta and as fast as Goku she had never, ever matched Frieza. A shock of yellow light bit into her side, exposing three feet of red and blackened flesh and the gaping white teeth of splintered ribs. Her eyes grew wide, the golden pupils growing and darkening into a yellow-brown glaze, and the red light spilled from her jaw in a thin, sickly beam that missed the emperor by three feet.

Then she fell, down and down in a spiral, oblivious to Vegeta screaming only in her head. She hit the ground like a yellow, boneless bag, gold fur already marred by the dust.

_end Part Three _


	18. Salvation for the Sake of Long Lines

Part Four

You know the lies they always told you

And the truths you never knew

All the things they never showed you

That swallow the light from the sun

Inside your room

Coming down the world turned over

And angels fall without you there

Gotta go on as you get colder

Or are you someone's prayer

--GooGoo Dolls

Chapter One

Salvation for the Sake of Long Lines

A/N: Ooh, spiffy! I bet y'all didn't see that one coming! Yeah, my little Ky'ale's not gonna see the final battle, but with Dende beside himself, the earth and therefore Chen Ron still gone and... all that other stuff, will she ever come back to life? Or will this fic end with everyone dead? See, that's the wonderful thing about fanfiction. On the show, you know they're coming back. But me, I can do whatever I want, 'cause I'm just that cool. :D You'll just have to wait and see.

Kasu-muse: Ah... Ember?

Ember: Hmm?

Kasu: I just want to know... how come Porunga's there, when Namic has been gone for forever, but Chen Ron can't come back unless the Earth is back?

Ember: ...artistic liscence.

Kasu: It just seems...

Ember: Look, Kasu! Plastic bag!

Kasu: Ooh! Plasticbagplasticbagplastic bag... runs off

¤

The crystal ball slowly formed a single, unbroken image, and faded away from a busy-looking hospital on a planet that could have been earth if earth housed six-armed, violet-blue aliens with massive, elephant-esque ears to a strange, desert-like planet that seemed pretty much deserted.

"Where is that?" Tien asked.

"Be quiet," Baba replied. Over the edge of the view twin sources of energy flew at each other and parted, neither giving in. The sight zoomed in a little, until they could make out the outlines, a blurry gold and a white-washed silver.

"Goku's back up!" Krillin yelled.

"No, he's not," Yamcha said, quietly, pointing to a sprawled out figure on the ground. All eyes traveled from that to the super-saiyan in the air, breaths held, all waiting for someone else to say it.

"That's Vegeta," Puar finally pointed out.

"Well," Krillin managed weakly, "at least he's on our side."

"That should have killed him," Tien snapped, his tone somewhat similar as if he was cursing, as a white-ish beam cut through his skin. Vegeta cried out but threw himself forward again, every inch the valient warrior. And maybe the act would have been complete if Tien wasn't entirely right.

"That might not mean anything."

"Don't be an idiot! It means something!"

"All of you shut up," Baba said.

"Look! It's Ky'ale!"

"What did I just say?"

"Where was she?"

"I don't know."

"Shut up!"

The golden feline rolled over in midair, somewhere in there having hit Freiza because they were both in freefall, talons and tails and metal parts mixed up. They seperated and Ky'ale was floating, then there was a flash of light and she was gone from the frame of the crystal ball.

"Where'd she go?"

"It's Piccolo!" The Namic landed on the rock, staring at something they couldn't quite see, then grabbed Goku and yelled something. Frieza flew for him. Vegeta caught him a nasty kick in the back of the neck, and the saiyan and emperor argued for a second, then split away, flying like hell away from one another. Piccolo followed the prince, carrying Goku.

"Where are they going?"

"Where's Ky'ale? Why isn't she going?"

After a second, King Kai opened his eyes and answered them. "Ky'ale is dead."

¤

A bubble floated up the edge of the Re-gen tank. A pretty, light green bubble. Just on the left side of well-shaped, the far right of it dragged under the weight of the fluid, leaving behind in its wake a short trail of much smaller bubbles. Black eyes trailed it as it rose, slowly, then with increasing speed, breaking the surface of the viscous green liquid with a slight ripple and a quiet chugging sound.

"He's awake," the water around him intoned in a deep, broken, warped voice, the vibrations in the liquid shaking loose a few more pastel bubbles from where they were stuck against the curved glass.

"Turn off the re-gen, then."

"Which button? This shit's not exactly in English, Vegeta." Vegeta? It wasn't Ky'ale's voice, Goku could tell though the liquid, so who would be talking to Vegeta? Maybe it was Goku. No, it wasn't. It couldn't be Goku.

A blurry figure pushed his way into the room and another backed away; because of green skin against green liquid he hadn't been visible at first. Green? There was so much green...

And then there was a series of beeps and the easy breathing cut off and Goku was very much aware that he was in over his head in airless liquid and no amount of bubbles could help him...

It drained and his head broke the surface a second or two later. A moment of vertigo passed in which the dense liquid holding him upright had vanished and left him unbalanced in the air, then he was sitting on the flat bottom and pushing open the door.

For a second, he just stood and stared, braced with one arm against the curved wall of the tank. Piccolo had a shallow cut along the side of his face but was unscarred besides, looking like he'd been there the whole time, caught in an argument with Vegeta that Goku had paid very little attention to as he pulled himself out. Now they both stopped and watched him. Dende sat in the middle of the room, staring into space, and Goku's stomach balled as he realized that the little Namic hadn't been healed, and they were still in the damned ship, and he could still feel the dark pulse of Frieza on the edge of his conciousness.

But... "Piccolo."

The Namic looked at him for a long second, then lifted one hand in salute.

"You're alive."

"Yeah," Piccolo agreed.

"Get dressed," Vegeta said, coldly, clipped.

There was a pause as all three of them paused, staring at each other, Goku wondering, the others reflecting. "Ky'ale?" he said after a second, wondering what it was he expected.

"Dead," Piccolo said, his tone less mourning than matter-of-fact.

"Get dressed," Vegeta said, coldly, tonelessly.

"Dead?" Goku asked, hearing his own voice as if from very far away.

"Yes," Piccolo said.

Vegeta said nothing, trying not to look at anyone, staring at a pile of orange clothing beside the regen tank.

In the short time, Goku had gotten very close to Ky'ale. Goku had gotten very close to both the other members of his odd little trio. "She's... how can she be _dead_?" The tone of his voice, a certain level of half-hysteria that maybe Vegeta was feeling himself and maybe he thought the other incredibly weak for feeling, who could tell anymore, pulled the dark glare up to Goku's face. He wasn't talking to Piccolo, but his eyes bore into Vegeta's, black against black. He didn't see anything in them but the curved reflection of the flourescent lights overhead. The ice was back, coating the cool, dry orbs that were the prince's eyes, the closed and shuttered windows to his soul.

"Move, Kakarotto. I need to use the fucking re-gen." And he was, now that he mentioned it, torn apart. The way he had moved, and the way he had spoken, had somehow diminished the way the wounds stood out but once the attention was drawn to them one realized how horrible they really were. His whole left side looked like it would be torn away from the right. Goku automatically moved away from the re-gen, letting the smaller man slide past him, keeping a measured distance between them to keep from one saiyan touching the other.

"Vegeta..."

"Move."

"How did you get that hurt? What happened?" How long had he been out? How had even together Ky'ale, Vegeta and Piccolo kept Frieza busy long enough to get him away? Long enough to summon Porunga?

"Shut up, Kakarotto."

"He was protecting you." Something was wrong with Piccolo, too; the sneering tone to his voice had goosebumps rising on Goku's skin.

"Shut the fuck up, Namic-"

"He was protecting you while the rest of the world went to hell. He was protecting you while he screwed everyone else over to make himself-"

"Shut _up_!" The door to the re-gen opened with enough force that it bounced off the side with a snap. The tank, however, seemed to have been made to be saiyan-proof and didn't even crack. "Shut the fuck up, Namic."

Piccolo pushed past Goku and only the taller saiyan grabbing at the white fabric of his cloak kept him back from the prince as he climbed into the re-gen, already starting to fill with a thin stream of green liquid. "Piccolo!"

"The bastard."

"What happened, Piccolo? Make himself what?" A chill ran up his spine as suddenly, his mind filled in the blank of its own accord.

Piccolo sighed and shrugged his cloak out of Goku's grip. "Wait until he comes out and tells you himself," he growled, visibly calmer, more like Piccolo and less like... whatever his anger had made him into.

"Piccolo." Maybe it was the sudden, cool clarity to Goku's voice that made him stop at that one word and maybe it was just that he'd always stopped to listen to what the saiyan had to say. "Dende's still... isn't he?"

"Yes."

Another pause. "And... the earth is still gone." There was no immediate answer so Goku continued without one. "Because Vegeta used the last wish. Because he became immortal."

"Goku-"

"Because he turned against us." The prince had torn off his shirt but other than that his clothing was on, the thick green liquid already surrounding him, suspending him; he was already asleep submerged in it. "Because he never really changed at all."

A sympathetic if rough hand landed on his shoulder. "What did you expect?"

But he barely heard Piccolo talking. _Like nothing ever happened. The earth is gone, Dende's gone, now Ky'ale is gone, and Vegeta..._

_Vegeta..._

_Vegeta was never here at all._

¤¤

It seemed like the universe was in line. And they probably were. _King Yemma must get overworked every time Frieza comes into power._

Well. Ky'ale wasn't real good at being pacient and this was not a short line. Oh, every once in a while it would shuffle forward but then they would get onto a borderline case and have to stop and wait while Yemma and a cohort argued about whether or not he was saved. The fourth time this happened Ky'ale threw herself back on her haunches with a groan.

"Oh, for fuck's sake! Can I just walk myself to Hell?"

"No," Yemma yelled over the line. Ky'ale hissed.

"Ky'ale!" A gratingly familiar voice came out of nowhere, then Krillin appeared from a doorway showing a glimpse of golden clouds. Yemma turned towards him.

"What the hell are you doing here? Oh, yeah, you can go to Otherworld but if you so much as toe the line..."

"Thank you!"

"King Kai sent me."

Ignoring the pleased soul passing him, King Yemma turned to regard the bald human in front of him. "Why the hell did he send you down here? Get sick of having that many people up there?"

"Oh, the gods forgive me. Long lines _and_ Krillin and I'm just _waiting_ to get to Hell?"

Krillin shrugged. "If he is, he's not going about curing himself very well. He wanted me to come down and tell you that he wants Ky'ale to come up with us."

King Yemma raised one eyebrow, then flicked his first two fingers at Ky'ale, flipping through his book. The people ahead of her groaned at the unfairness as she skipped past them, sitting in front of the expansive desk of the giant judge.

"He's kidding, isn't he?" Yemma asked after a second. "I mean, you, and the others, I can agree with. I considered the Namic but he did enough good to atone. This one, though?" He looked down at the cat over the edge of the massive book of souls. "Do you have _any_ idea how many people you've killed?"

"No. But do tell, I'm sure it's fascinating." She turned to the person behind her- looking thoroughly ticked at having his spot taken- and said, with the tone of someone convinced that the other person cares about their day-to-day life, "I'm sure there are a lot. I cleared out planets for a living."

"How can you complain about long lines when you helped _make_ them?"

"Pure talent?"

Krillin shrugged. "She _is_ helping to kill Frieza, though. That's a good thing."

"And I'm sure it's all out of concern for the people he might kill."

"What can I say?" She cocked her head to the side and gave the judge a smile of pure benediction. "I've become quite the humanitarian." Her stomach churned as she wondered if that sarcastic sigh might be half true. Goku had that effect on people, sometimes...

"Oh, for fuck's sake," the person behind her said, now thoroughly ticked off and ready to be judged, for good or ill. "She's one person! Just let her go!"

"One person can unbalance everything," Yemma said, not exactly to that person and not exactly to Ky'ale, suddely serious, and the cat, to her own surprise, felt the fur on the back of her neck rise slightly.

Her tone was sarcastic but somehow the sobriety of the words was transcribed. "To either direction."

Yemma shook his head. "Fine," he told Krillin, "but tell South she's _his_ responsibility. If she fucks up it's his ass."

"Woohoo! I love not being my own responsibility!" Ky'ale bounded away from the desk, towards the leering head of Snake Road. "This'll be fun! Salvation for the sake of keeping a line moving!"

Krillin cast his gaze over to Yemma but while the judge had doubtlessly heard the cat he wasn't paying her any more attention. He had sixty-three billion, five hundred and ninty-six million, fifty-two thousand and six people left to judge before lunch and he didn't have time to acknolege a half-mad feline. "You _want_ to be damned, don't you, Ky'ale?" he snapped.

"Are you kidding? This's gonna be great, Krillin!" When she turned back to look at him, her eyes were glowing eirily in the light from the clouds. "Did the battle end?"

"Sort of." And, walking beside her, uncomfortably aware of all the time she'd spent threatening to rip his head off and play pool with it back when earth existed, he told her what had happened in the crystal ball.

¤¤¤

When he woke up, there was no one waiting for him.

He hadn't expected anyone to wait for him, but it was still a little surprising; they had no where else to go, they had no where else to be. He expended a little bit of energy to dry out his pants and his hair, then toweled off his skin and pulled on his torn-up shirt, grimacing as he felt the dried flakes of his own blood scratch against him. Well. He needed time alone, just a few seconds, anyway.

_Ky'ale? Ky'ale? I know you're listening, cat._

There was a long pause, then a familiar presence, like a part of his mind had been missing and then replaced. Ky'ale's voice was faint, from far away, which made a great deal of sense given how far away she was, and not quite as powerful as King Kai. _"Vegeta! I can see you in this crystal ball!"_

The saiyan prince blinked. _Wait, what?_

_"The witch-human-thing. She has a crystal ball and I can see you in it- and Piccolo, and Kakarotto..."_

He growled as she continued and she heard him, either through his own ears or through the crystal ball. _What's the witch-woman doing in Hell, Ky'ale?_ he asked her when she'd stopped.

There was a pause. _"Oh, right. No, I'm not in Hell. Kai says in Hell, they have a giant television to watch the precedings of the mortal world through- which seems hardly fair."_

_Why aren't you in Hell?_ He wasn't exactly _upset_ that his bodyguard was saved but it didn't make much sense and he wasn't in the best of moods to begin with, so maybe he sounded like he was snapping. Either way, Ky'ale sounded almost defensive.

_"They abducted me."_

_Ah._ Heh. Friends in literally high places- or, at least, acquaintances.

There was a moment of silence inside his head before Ky'ale answered his unspoken question. _"Kakarotto's in the main room. With Piccolo, and Dende. I think they're waiting for you."_

_Did the Namic tell him... about... _How to put it? After all this time, he didn't know exactly how the verbalize the one thing he'd wanted for longer than he could remember. _...the dragon?_

There was a nervous moment of silence, then, _"He didn't want to. Kakarotto sort of... guessed."_

_How long have you been spying on them?_

_"Since I came here. They were already watching all of you."_

_Tell them to stop._

There was a pause, the faintest, muffled sounds of voices coming to Vegeta as if from very far away, before Ky'ale's 'voice' returned to his mind. _"They aren't stopping. They won't listen to me."_

Vegeta sighed and spoke out loud, confident that his words were heard via the crystal. "King Kai," he said, slowly but icily. "You have thirty seconds to stop spying on me before I dedicate the remaining time left to me- which happens to be forever- to figuring out how to hunt every one of you down and tear you all apart."

_"They stopped."_

Vegeta allowed a small smile.


	19. Another Sunbeam

Chapter Two

Yet Another Sunbeam

A/N: Yes, a double-update, mostly 'cause this ones, like, three pages, and also I'm almost done with the Epilogue and I want to post it as soon as I'm finished, for a personal satisfaction. This one's a short, but fun chapter. I love the conversation between Vegeta and Goku at the end. It makes me go, "Squee!"

¤

Vegeta had an extra set of clothes stored beside the regen tank and he hastily redressed, feeling his bodyguard's presense wane out then flicker back in as she talked with the others or just got distracted. Finally he walked towards the door to the regen room, fully dressed and healed, only a slight phantom pain lingering in testiment to the massive damages he'd sustained. He reached out and lay his hand on the doorknob, then, for perhaps the first time in his entire life, hesitated.

_Are they still waiting?_ he asked Ky'ale, listening but unable to hear Piccolo and Kakarotto behind the door and using that to cover up his pause.

_"Yes,"_ his bodyguard replied, her tone faltering as she got out the monosyllabic word. Vegeta silently cursed Piccolo, even though be believed Ky'ale when she said the Namic hadn't wanted to tell what had happened. It was _Vegeta's_ story to tell, wasn't it? Hell, it wasn't like he was face-to-face with the dragon and told it, in blatant terminology, that his immortality was more important than the lives of some seven billion people on the earth.

_But it _had_ been your decision_, some voice deep inside his head reminded him. _And you _did_ choose what you chose. _

Yeah, he had. But he was the Prince of all Saiyans, and he was finally powerful enough to back up that claim. He couldn't die. No matter what happened in the universe, he was infallible, eternal, undefeatable, immortal. Might makes right, and he could finally back up his claims with a strength he hadn't dared dream about a year ago.

_If I said it out loud, Kakarotto would say that right makes might, that when you have something to fight for you fight harder, you have a better chance to win._

_For fuck's sake. Who _cares_ what Kakarotto would say? I'm finally the stronger of the two of us, the real saiyan, the only living being that can truly call itself a saiyan. I'm finally stronger than he is!_

_Nothing else matters._

He opened the door. Goku, leaning against the curved steel wall of the ship, looked up, slowly, as if he was scared of what he would see. A sense of _deja vu_ suddenly saturated the air around them, and Vegeta felt like Ky'ale should be curled around Goku's legs, grinning ironically to herself at something in her head, that Piccolo, standing beside the low-bred not-saiyan, was out of place, a being from another life that had no business existing in this spaceship, in these memories.

Two pairs of black eyes met, and where a strange sense of unbalance had once stolen the breath from Vegeta's lungs, now a strange coldness stopped him in mid-step.

"Who the hell are you?" Goku asked, quiety, his voice disconcertingly quiet.

"Should I leave?" Piccolo asked, sounding a little uncomfortable.

"Yes," Vegeta said, coldly.

"No," Goku whispered at the same time, sounding oddly detached from life.

Piccolo looked from one to the other, then apparently decided to go with Vegeta's decision because he turned and, quietly as possible, left, closing the door of the spaceship neatly behind him.

For a few minutes, neither warrior said anything. Resentment and some sort of odd, heavy emotion- guilt? No, that was impossible, he was _Vegeta_, there was nothing he should feel guilty about- churned in the saiyan prince's gut, while Goku was staring at the floor by his lover's feet and saying nothing, showing nothing, seeming entirely numb.

Finally, Goku spoke up, in a voice that trembled and enfuriated Vegeta entirely. His rival, this idiot who had always flaunted that he was more powerful, sounded weaker than anyone else in the universe at that one moment, sounded appealing and whining and begging, a tone that sickened Vegeta and strengthened the heaviness inside of him.

"You look better," he whispered.

Vegeta snarled.

One step brought him face-to-face with Goku, his arm slamming into the younger man's chest and sending him crashing into the wall. The smaller saiyan pinned his rival, pressed against the steel, looking surprised but no less numbed, looking like he wanted to push the other off but couldn't stand the thought of touching him.

"Who am I?" Vegeta growled, repeating his lover's earlier question. "Who am I? I am Vegeta, I am the Prince of all Saiyans, I've fought tooth and claw against you and I've killed your friends and I've known you for a long time now, long enough that _I_ know _you_, so I would think that by now you would _know who I am._"

That broke through the dulled pain and brought a spark of life to Goku's eyes. "You killed them. I might... I might not get them back, now. We had a plan, Vegeta, and they were going to come back, and now they might not!"

Vegeta's top lip lifted enough the show the point of his teeth, and he backed a step away, shoving his rival hard against the ship's wall in disgust and then drawing his arms back, as if now _he_ didn't want to touch _Goku._ "You sound like a child, Kakarotto."

"Goku."

Somewhere within the heart and soul of an alien prince, Vegeta found the restraint not to physically lash out, but a sort of sheen flashed through his eyes and his next words dripped with the old hatred. "Goku. Maybe that _is_ your name, Kakarotto, maybe that is the only name you deserve, because maybe you are nothing that can be called a saiyan. Not even so much as an animal to be given a saiyan name."

Goku straightened, struggling not to wince at the bruises down his back. "Maybe not," he said, his voice oddly and disconcertingly cool. "Maybe if saiyans betray their friends, give everything up for power, are willing to... give up _everything_..."

Vegeta smirked. "Give up _everything_, Kakarotto?" he asked. "What, _Goku_, exactly is _everything?_ Is everything _friends_, or _family_, or," he hesitated, the word tasting bitter on his tongue, "_love_?"

Goku didn't answer.

"Goku, you know me by now. There is nothing beyond power, there is nothing beyond reaching one's full potential." And his eyes flashed suddenly blue, his hair bleached to gold, and yellow fire ran along his skin, warm, playful. It didn't hurt the second time he changed, there was nothing beyond a rush of power not entirely unlike the adrenaline of a sudden fall.

"Vegeta," Goku whispered, surprised.

"And because of that, because I searched for it, I found it. I found it, Kakarotto, I found my own power, on my own path."

"Yes, you did," Goku answered, his voice still quiet, the surprise slowly fading from his eyes. Vegeta frowned; he'd wanted the other shocked, intimidated, submissive, not this, not the calm whispers he was managing. "You found it, Vegeta. Power for power's sake." He looked almost sad, now, and Vegeta realized with a stomach-twisting certainty that he saw _pity_ in the younger man's eyes. "You haven't changed at all, have you?"

And that pushed him over the edge.

"No," the prince snarled, eyes suddenly livid. "No, I haven't changed. And that's what stings the most, doesn't it, _Goku_? That was why you did this, why you did any of this, why you lied and said you-" the word still tasted vile and false and self-pitying- "_loved_ me, why you slept with me and talked with me and did everything else you fucking did. But you failed, didn't you? You were trying to change me, to make me into yet another sunbeam, but I'm still the same, still not quite what you wanted me to be. You couldn't make me into another Superfriend and now you're pissed off."

Goku looked stricken and took a step forward, but Vegeta lashed out with his hand and caught his rival on the collarbone with a motion that was not quite a punch and not quite a slap. Goku staggered backwards, hitting against the wall again.

Vegeta was smiling, now, a sarcastic and biting smile that was entirely mirthless and completely sadistic. "I'm not going to change for you, Kakarotto. I simply don't care that much. I simply _don't care about you,_ or any of your friends, or your pathetic wife or your disgraceful little half-breed son. I won't become what you think I should be to make you happy, because you and all your little friends can go rot in hell for all I care. This is where I wanted to be; after I kill Frieza, I can do whatever the hell I want. I can go return to what I was supposed to do, what the saiyans should be doing; I can go and become as powerful as possible and leave you to do whatever the hell you think you should do to protect goodness and justice and fucking happiness for as long as you tell yourself it's worth it. This, Kakarotto, is where we split paths."

"Vegeta." But before he could say anything, Vegeta had reached the door, ripped it open, and walked furiously out, letting the golden flame around him die as he walked.

¤

Ky'ale opened her eyes slowly. Krillin, King Kai, Tien, Yamcha, Baba, Choat Zu and Puar sat in a half-circle around her, watching her intently, looking scared to breathe on her for how fragile she looked. The elbow joint of her forelegs were trembling.

"Ky'ale?" Krillin's voice was loaded with something very like concern, and she blinked sightlessly at him before the shock at what she had seen had finally worn off. For a second, buffeted within her prince's mind by the violent maelstrom of his thoughts, she had lost her grounding and, for seconds at a time, her ability to think for herself. Vegeta was in a _very_ violent mood- and there was really only one person he would take it out on.

"Are you alright?" Puar asked, sounding concerned, as she flew in tight circles around her fellow feline's head.

Ky'ale braced herself, standing heavily. "I'm fine."

"What happened?" Krillin asked.

"None of your business."

"If it involved Goku, it's our-"

"Shut up."

Something in the tone of her voice caught their attention. Fifteen eyes landed on her, mouths closed, and watched her waver on her own feet, then give up and lie down, panting, on her side.

"What happened?" Krillin asked again.

Ky'ale shook her head and turned to Baba, ignoring the bald human for the time being. She didn't have patience to deal with him at the moment. "Witch, can you find Frieza?"

"Of course."

The arrogance in the witches voice bothered Ky'ale for a reason she couldn't quite place, but she ignored it and nodded at the crystal ball. "Then, if I were you, I would find him. Or you'll miss him being torn apart."


	20. On Victory, More or Less

Chapter Three

On Victory, More or Less

A/N: Okies! Well, the Epilogue is done. I'll be posting that and the last chapter soon. :D

Did you all know that this story has taken me, from conception to this point, almost four years? See, I thought it up the first time I heard the song for which it was named, then I started to write it for like, three months, then let it sit. When I came back to it, I hated it, so I scrapped the first whole version and started over. (I don't think I'd be psychologically capable of that now. :P) I wrote in it for about six months before I started posting it up here. I've been posting it here for more than a year.

Holy crap, yes?

¤

Another three came at him, their odd, deformed alien bodies crashing through the air, and in a flash of yellow energy they were gone.

Below him, and to his right, a spaceship blew up and coiled in on itself, the metal melting into a shining slag.

Shaken by the waves of energy that _emanated_ from him, rocks fell from nearby cliffs and the air choked with red dust and sand.

The world shook. And so did heaven.

"Why is it only Vegeta?" Krillin was staring at Baba's crystal but there was no question to whom the question was directed. "Where is Goku?"

"In the spaceship. The one we landed in. Don't ask stupid questions." Ky'ale was pacing, tight little circles around in the clouds, her head twisting in remarkbable angles at astonishing speeds to keep one eye on the crystal at all times. She tried for the eighth time to talk to Vegeta, but he was still blocking her from his mind with natural ease. He was destroying Frieza's followers with a sort of disjointed callousness that only came from someone trying to prove that he doesn't care about life. Vegeta was trying to make himself back into the Prince of all Saiyans, the evil monster that had landed on earth. Trying to denounce all change that might have happened to him.

"Why isn't Goku fighting Frieza?" Tien asked, grabbing one of the kairn's curled horns to stop her in mid-step. She snarled and twisted but he held her in place. The crystal made a small explosion noise and she couldn't see what was going on. "Did something happen to him, Ky'ale?"

She opened her mouth, let it ease close, and, with one twist of her neck, pried her horn from the human's grip. "Yes and no," she said cooly.

"What does that mean?" She wasn't sure who asked it, but she felt them all staring at her- at _her_, while Vegeta fought for the fate of mankind!- and she felt her heart skip a couple of beats- another flash of light, another muffled _kaboom!_, what was happening?

"It means," she growled, turning her back on the good guys to watch the battle in the crystal, "that Goku's alive and fine. But he got his precious little human feelings hurt." And, snarling, she refused to say anything more, watching the battle with an intensity that was almost frightening.

¤¤

The door slid open and then closed. Goku didn't move; he knew it was Piccolo, knew that if anyone understood what had just happened, it most certainly wouldn't be Piccolo, and didn't say anything. The Namic stood in the doorway for a long time, saying nothing, then, quietly, said, "You know Vegeta's out there fighting Frieza, don't you?"

Goku's mouth quirked up imperceptively and he turned to face Piccolo with a long, slow sigh. His face was completely clear, and his shirt covered the red mark on his collarbone; there was no sign outside of his expression that anything was wrong at all."You know he can't lose, don't you?" he asked in a perfectly normal tone of voice.

Piccolo shrugged and looked down, walking towards the saiyan that had been the first person to ever trust him and the second friend he'd ever had, with measured, careful steps. "He can lose. He can't die, but he can still lose."

Goku's mouth twitched again, still not enough to actually form a smile. "You aren't following the fight, are you?"

Piccolo shrugged.

_Can you even feel pain anymore, Vegeta?_ He very well knew there were types of pain the Saiyan Prince couldn't feel; wondered what it would be like to be immune to emotional hurt, wondered what it would've been like to be born and raised as a saiyan. _If there is a little bit of saiyan left in me, I'd like to do that. Just shut down nerve endings._

"You know I slept with him," Goku continued conversationally, unable for one frightening second to figure out what possessed him to say it.

"Slept with him?"

The confusion in Piccolo's voice, coupled with a few happier memories, actually made Goku smile, which felt oddly like he was betraying his earlier hurt. But thank god- or the Kai, or whatever- for non-sexually reproducing aliens, for listeners who were incapable of passing judgement. "Human slang; I had sex with him."

One of Piccolo's antennae twitched. "I thought you could only do that with human or saiyan women," he said incediously.

"No, it works either way." Piccolo found pretty much all sex a little disturbing- much in the way Yamacha avoided watching Namics vomit their own young- so Goku decided against going into overmuch detail on the matter.

Piccolo shook his head, then shrugged heavily, not understanding the implied significance of Goku's confession. "Saiyans are a confusing breed," he said finally, both antennae twitching in contempt.

"You know what's odd, Piccolo?" Goku sighed in reply, brushing his bangs back with his fingers and slowly climbing to his feet. He knew what he had to do, of course; he'd always known, since the second he learned that Vegeta had chosen immortality, since right before their fight. "I'm starting to understand them."

¤¤

How dare he?

How could he come out of no where, how could he pretend to be the first person to really, really give a shit- Ky'ale not counting as a person- not just about whether Vegeta was alive but about who he was, and then, turn around and make it clear that _who he was_ was insufficient, that he had to become like another servent of the light, another noble hero, another one of Kakarotto's little friends. Another one of the group.

He wasn't noble, he wasn't a hero, he wasn't really even a good guy, and he did not belong in that happy little group where everyone talked and laughed and got along.

This was where he belonged. On the battlefeild, hearing the voice that had ruined his childhood screaming out as another bone in his body was crushed. A gentle fire, one that he had started, burning the scrubby grass a couple hundred feet below them. Immortal, powerful, feeling nothing but the pulse of his own anger, his own hatred, his long-buried vendettas, winning in a fight he'd been losing all along.

He found himself at exactly the level of emotion he'd always wanted- he was cool, empty; there was nothing in what passed for a saiyan heart except his anger and his hatred.

He found himself at the level of strength he'd always set for himself as a goal; he was a super-saiyan, and while there was more untapped potential to reach, he was content with the present, for now.

He found himself finally immortal; his goal for the past few years, since he'd first learned about the dragonballs, a goal that hadn't been in the least diminished after all those years on earth.

He found himself almost untouched, dominating over Freiza, finally winning in a battle he'd been losing since he was young. Finally getting revenge for his parents, his father, his entire race, his entire life.

And he wasn't happy about it, about any of it. He couldn't be happy. _How dare he think he could change me, make me into something I'm not. How _dare_ he manipulate me, play with me, _toy_ with me, lie to me; the fucking _bastard_. I hate him. I always hated him._

Because Vegeta hated Kakarotto, and that was how things were. How things had always been, since the day five or six years ago when they'd met. Because Kakarotto was a human, was weak, was grovelling and sympathetic, and until now always the stronger of the two.

And there was no sensation of victory, no elation, no rush of adrenaline. Only the coiled hate inside of him, and maybe something more.

A little bit more.

He dodged aside from a white sphere of energy that grazed his right side, grinned without feeling anything inside of him that might have caused the grin, and, slamming his foot into Frieza's gut, shoved the universal emperor to the ground. By some stroke of luck, Frieza landed in a little clearing around the fire, stoking the flames with the wind of his fall, making them jump and dance.

And, feeling nothing but the hate that was almost as old as he was, Vegeta lifted one hand, feeling yellow energy coalecse into it, harden into a nearly solid ball. His hands were shaking- why were his hands shaking- as he lifted it, felt it shifting and twitching eagerly in the palms of his hand. Got ready to throw it, to finally finish a war older than himself.

And tightened his grip on the sphere almost painfully as a black shoe stepped firmly onto Frieza's chest, pinning him down- and protecting him. As if some part of his mind was scared of his attack jumping out and killing the being on the emperor's chest, his fingers dug into the heat and light of the energy, holding it still, staring down in anger and hatred at his long-time rival and his nearly eternal enemy.

"Move aside, Kakarotto," he heard himself growl, though his mind was floating somewhere else, detached from himself.

He couldn't meet Kakarotto's eyes, couldn't stand the soft, sad smile on his face, couldn't stand, _couldn't stand_ the almost-pity that was evident in every fucking line of his body. Couldn't stand it. The human-hearted saiyan looked plaintively up and him, and lifted his shoulders in a quiet gesture, not moving off the broken body. "I'm not going to move, Vegeta. I'm not going to let you kill him this way."

"Would you prefer humane euthenasia?" the prince snarled, feeling the snakes in his gut raise up, hoods spread, fangs bared.

"I would prefer..."

"That I feel _remorse_ for killing the fucking bastard," Vegeta put in, effortlessly stealing the first four words from Goku's tongue. "You would prefer that I shed tears over every life I've taken, wouldn't you, Kakarotto? It's not going to happen."

_Some hearts never change._ "I know."

Vegeta's eyes darkened, and the energy his fingers were digging into crackled dangerously as his anger surged. "Move, Kakarotto."

"No."

"If you don't move, I'm going to kill you." His stance made the words a lot more than empty threat.

Black eyes swept up to meet Vegeta's blue ones; there was a level of sadness there that was far more than Vegeta had expected, far more than he had ever seen. When Gohan died, Goku's grief wasn't this deep; he thought- he knew- he would get his son back. But now, looking at his lover standing with golden flames licking at blonde hair, he knew he had lost something to the saiyan prince that he couldn't ever reclaim, and didn't know whether or not it was his fault. _Some hearts never change._

"I know."


	21. Poisoned Hearts

Chapter Four

Poisoned Hearts

--

The tension around them was palpible, Ky'ale could taste it with every breath. Someone's hand was clenching in her fur and she couldn't pull her eyes away from the crystal for long enough to growl at them. She struggled to stabilize her breathing as every being in Heaven watched, riveted, waiting for the final motion that would finish the battle between Vegeta and Goku forever. Ky'ale was the only one who knew the story behind it, but there was no one in the group that doubted that Goku would let the prince kill him, and everyone waited with baited breath for that one world-spinning second.

And then the energy in Vegeta's hands faltered, and died.

"Why?" the saiyan prince snarled, his voice suddenly loud and sparking with something unbeliably uncontrolled, a strange and new emotion spreading over his fine-boned face. "Why would you let me kill you, Kakarotto? Why do you care so much what I'm _feeling_ when I kill the bastard that ruined my life; what the hell does it _matter_ in the long run?"

Goku's eyes struggled to appeal to his lover; he spread his hands hopelessly, pleadingly, but didn't get anything in the way of an understanding reaction. "Because you have to feel _something_, Vegeta, besides just anger."

The prince took one step forward, then another one; the yellow flames around him pulsed in time to his heartbeat, as he reached forward with one hand and braced it against Goku's shoulder. "But I do feel something else," he breathed, leaning forward and craning his neck back so their faces were inches apart, each gust of breath pluming against the other's lips. "I also fucking hate you."

And he punched him in the stomach, hard enough to send him staggering back, choking and clutching his gut.

Vegeta watched his lover keel over, coughing, with a dispassionate coldness in his eyes. "You win again, Kakarotto," he told the choking saiyan in front of him, with an ironic bite to his voice. "You feel so fucking much, so you get to kill him." And, with a final, heated glare in Goku's direction, he spun on his heel and walked, no where in particular, simply away.

--

_"Vegeta?"_ He was still ignoring her, and it burned Ky'ale to know that. The crystal ball had gone clear as soon as the battle was over and Baba had collapsed into a boneless heap on top of it; no one bothered her and they talked in quiet voices, hushed whispers, confused murmurs.

They all knew the second Frieza died. They felt it, like a great tremor through Otherworld, a releasing of tension. Just below them, in Heaven, Ky'ale could hear the faint cheers of a various knot of souls, celebrating the fall of perhaps the most evil creature who ever came to be. _And despite everything he's done to me, I cannot appreciate his death._

She didn't know how she knew she could do it, but with one experimental hop, she plunged through the yellow clouds and plummeted down to normal Heaven, where souls like little clouds floated in bunches, and Bulma sat nervously knitting on a bench. The blue-haired woman's head snapped up at the blur of gold, and her project dropped from her hands; she rose effortlessly and jogged over to the kairn with desperate motions that made Ky'ale doubt the wisdom of coming down here.

"Ky'ale!" Her fingers automatically moved to the spot behind Ky'ale's ears that always sort of dimly itched, and the kairn leaned into the scratches, suddenly wishing, with a strength that startled her, that none of this had happened. "Freiza's dead? So when do we all get to go back?"

And she suddenly wished very, very much that none of this had happened. "I don't know," she confessed in a quiet voice. "Porunga... his wishes..."

Bulma was watching her intently. "Ky'ale... what did Goku and Vegeta wish for, from Porunga?"

"We had a plan, but... Dende..." She didn't know how to elaborate; thinking back, she didn't even know what exactly had screwed up their noble plan so badly. "Bulma, the earth is still gone, there won't be more wishes for another year. Vegeta is immortal."

And the scratches stopped immediately, but that was expected.

She tried to continue, but she had no idea what she could possibly say. _I'm sure no one ever comes down to this part of Heaven with good news, not now._ "Goku and Vegeta... Goku got past Vegeta, and I think that scared him, somehow, and he had to prove... that he couldn't be changed." And why was she justifying the actions of her prince, anyway? It wasn't the business of some human woman, except that, in its own way, it killed her.

She was looking odd, staring intently on some patch of grass just over Ky'ale's shoulder. "They slept together, didn't they, cat?"

And for a long second, Ky'ale didn't know exactly how to respond. "There are times," she drawled after an amazed silence, unable to figure out how Bulma jumped to a conclusion that she herself, even after a life spent with Vegeta, hadn't been able to find until it was shoved into her face, "where you are insightful to the degree where it is difficult to believe you are human."

Bulma rolled her eyes in reply. "And there are times in which you are thick to the degree where it is difficult to believe you are anything more sentient than a housecat."

"And then, there are other times..."

"Ky'ale?"

"Yes, harpy?"

"Go find Gohan. Tell him that his father's fine." As long as Goku was okay, he'd make everything better; it was Goku's job, it was what he did. She grinned at the feline's grumbled complaints and scratched at the ruff on her shoulders, then, before Ky'ale could walk away, hurriedly continued. "But don't tell him-"

"No shit."

"Just making sure."

--

Goku folded into the couch in the spaceship, the same spaceship that had been his home for the past- had it already been a month, only been a month- and tried not to remember much of anything. It wasn't easy, Ky'ale's cheerful, "This means I get the couch!" resounded in his head even louder when he covered his eyes with both hands and curled up over his knees.

He felt a broad, heavy hand on his shoulder, but knew Piccolo wouldn't know what to say, so he didn't start any conversation. Just sat there, barely acknowledging the namic's tries to comfort him. He didn't want to start crying- wasn't _going_ to start crying, he realized with a disturbingly saiyan-like determination- but it wasn't an easy conviction to hold onto. Was Vegeta going to come back to the ship, or was he going to stay out on his own for the next year, avoiding them, living on his own. Would he... he couldn't commit suicide, Goku decided, because that would be weak (not to mention, although Goku avoided the thought, currently impossible). Of course, he must already consider himself weak, and goddammit, why did he have to be so damned confusing all of the time...

"I'm sorry," Piccolo finally managed, drawing his hand back as though prolonged contact was just too much. "We'll wish him back the next time the dragonballs come."

Goku stiffened, his head shot up and twisted to stare, shocked, at the surprised namic. "He's dead?" he yelped.

"Your son, Goku."

Oh. Of course, Gohan.

_Oh, god. Gohan._ He'd failed his son- he let him die and he had failed to bring him back, by trusting Vegeta to do the right thing.

And he couldn't quite get the prince's voice out of his mind. _You couldn't. It's over. Protect them next time._

_They could have protected themselves, too. It's not always someone else's fault._

"But I promised I would protect them." He hadn't realized he was speaking out loud until he heard the derisive snort from the doorway and every nerve in his body jumped at once at the sound of the all-too-familiar voice.

"And you damn near died yourself trying," the saiyan prince said, his voice measured and cold, standing with his arms crossed in the enterance to the ship.

Goku forced a weak smile that wasn't fooling anyone. "You did come back. I thought you might weather the year out there alone."

Vegeta gave a small but eloquent shrug that made it clear that the option had occurred to him, too. And then they just sort of watched each other, rivals again, having run out of things to say and run into appologies they weren't sure they would mean if they did give them. Piccolo had vanished and Goku hadn't even noticed. Vegeta eventually walked into the ship, sinking into the chair across the main living room from the couch Goku perched on, and, absently, picked up the abandoned Rubriks cube from the table between them, sliding the sides in his hands, mixing up the lines of color until the original order was lost. There was some sense of symbolism there, but Goku had never been very good at symbolism and he couldn't quite figure it out.

"Vegeta?" The quiet question didn't really bring any change to the saiyan prince's countenence, but Goku was fairly certain he was listening. He chewed for a second on his lip, trying to think of what to say, and then just plunged ahead, and all uncomfortable feelings aside because he couldn't get much more uncomfortable than this if he tried. "I told you... a long time ago, that I didn't want anything more than... what we did, out of you. Nothing more than you really wanted to give to me." And he didn't sound like a complete idiot at all, he thought with some self-directed exaspertation. He took a deep breath and plowed ahead, because now Vegeta's gaze was just below Goku's eyes and it was perfectly clear that the Prince of all Saiyans was silently listening. "And then I did try to change you, Vegeta, and then I did try to make you into something you weren't, and that's almost the same thing. I guess I just... I'm sorry, Vegeta." And who ever thought that Goku would ever be appologizing to Vegeta?

For a second that seemed to stretch for hours, Vegeta didn't say anything. He just sat there, and let himself hate Goku, because despite everything the lower-born saiyan said, and despite everything Vegeta did to prove him wrong, he _had _changed his prince. And despite everything Vegeta had intended, despite all of the saiyan prince's plans, he was inescapibly in love, and he hated himself for finally acknowledging it.

And so his voice was taut with fury directed evenly at both saiyans when he said, "You told me, Kakarotto, that I needed to feel more than just the anger."

Goku's gut twitched with the memory, but he only nodded.

And then Vegeta's eyes flicked up and met his, and for a second, Goku couldn't breathe. "You do know," the prince said in a barely audible voice, "that there is more. Don't you?"

Goku stared at him, caught between shock and disbelief, trying to figure out some alternative that Vegeta could be saying. And for a long time, he didn't say anything.

_ end Part Four _


	22. Epilogue

Epilogue

Walked away

Heard them say

Poisoned hearts can never change

Walked away again

Turned away

In disgrace

Felt the chill upon my face

Cooling from within

Hard to notice, gleaming from the sky

When you're staring at the cracks

Hard to notice, what is passing by

With eyes lowered

All the cracks, they lead right to me

All the cracks, they crawl right through me

Walked away

Heard them say

Poisoned hearts will never change...

--

The earth was a skeleton of what it had once been- cities and skyscrapers covering the land and making it, from space, look brown and gray and blue and white. Making the average denizen of earth forget death and dying had been a freebie wish from Chen Ron who, despite being a dragon and therefore a difficult bitch, still hadn't been much more inclined towards world-wide chaos than anyone else.

But it was back. It was back, whole, complete, pulsating with life. Humans teetered on the edge of obliterating themselves, exceeding the limits of the earth's capacity, sucking the vitality out of the rest of the world. From the outside, things could be said to be back to normal.

From the outside, it was as if nothing had even happened.

Such little things as love and war rarely affect the outside.

Ky'ale stretched, rolling over onto her back, writhing so that the rough wood floor of Goku's old, worn, childhood home scratched her back, and the broad side of her horns rubbed at already-bare patches rubbed in the floor from dozens of similar motions. A loud crash from outside didn't so much as faze her, though it did seem to upset the boy at the table right beside her head. Gohan slammed his pencil down, glared at the window, and then down at the cat, as if it were somehow her fault.

"Can't they be any quieter?" he growled, seeming frustrated, most likely by the level of difficulty presented by primitive human calculus. Saiyans were all bad at that sort of thing.

"No, not really," the kairn replied, dryly matter-of-fact and not entirely talking about the training currently occurring outside. Gohan didn't conciously sense that presense of details he wouldn't want to hear, but some deep instinct kept him from prying further. There was another bang from outside, and he hesitated in picking his pencil back up.

"I should probably go help them," he offered hesitantly.

Ky'ale lazily opened one upside-down eye, gave her best shrug- which, with feline shoulders pressed against the floor to begin with, wasn't easy- and demurred, "Whatever you want." She was never Chichi's first call for babysitter, but with Krillin out of town and Yamcha off training, taking Bulma with him, it was her or Piccolo.

Chichi didn't like Ky'ale, but Chichi _hated_ Piccolo. It was amazing how easily the human population forgot that it had been Ky'ale who had wished for Vegeta to be immortal, Ky'ale who had almost destroyed the only chance for the earth being reborn, Ky'ale who had almost ruined everything that anyone there stood for. It all became Vegeta's fault- Vegeta, who, after all, became immortal, and corrupted Goku, and didn't have cute paws or a fuzzy face or a way with children. Things had gone back to the status-quo on the outside, after all; Vegeta was still the problem and Ky'ale was still the pitiful pawn of evil.

"I mean," Gohan was saying, idly drawing figures on the table top, "I'm one of earth's protectors, too. Mom never understood that."

Ky'ale writhed, clambored to her feet, and cocked her head easily at the half-saiyan. He had impressed her, these past two years- first, with his easy acceptance of life and death and the easy transition between the two, and then, with his parents' divorce, his mother moving to the city to live near Bulma and the others, while Vegeta, of all people, the stoic warrior who had made his hatred for the half-breed quite clear since the moment they met, who had tried to kill him several times, started spending more and more time over at the place where first Goku, and now Gohan, were growing up. (Ky'ale had gone ahead and moved in with them; she had no inhibitions about that and keeping Vegeta's bachelor pads was starting to wear on her.) He made it clear he knew what was going on, and even more so that he didn't mind. He reminded her of his father, and in some way, that made her distressingly proud of him, as if in some way she'd had a hand in it.

_Well, his father got like that through massive brain trauma, and I've been trying to kill Gohan since he was a little kid. Maybe I have helped, some. _Honestly, that could have been a more heartwarming thought.

"You know, Gohan," she said, carefully, "your mother told me to always make sure you were doing your homework at this time."

He sighed. "I know."

"On the other hand, Chichi's not here right now."

The effect was instantaneous. Gohan was, quite literally, through the door before his pencil landed.

--

Four hours later, Gohan had gone home, sweat-streaked and carrying half-finished homework under his arm. Goku was proud of him. "Priorities," he said, watching his son's form weave through the air. "That's what I always say." Vegeta only shrugged. Frowning, Goku turned on the other saiyan, looking imploringly down at him and striving to appear as helpless as a two-hundred-pound alien martial artist can. "Hey, I know you don't like training with him, but it's not all that bad. And he sure is getting better at it."

It was impossible not to respond to that grin. It held everything that was 'proud father' in it. "For a disgraceful half-breed, your son is nearly decent to the point where I forgive it for being your spawn," he allowed, stiffly, rolling his eyes when, by the angle of Goku's grin, he was far from taken seriously. He tried to comfort himself by promising himself that both Kakarotto and Gohan would die someday- but that thought was dampered by the fact that, thanks to their recent wish the last time Chen Ron had come around, so would he.

Somehow, that didn't bother him nearly as much as he'd thought it would. He'd wanted to be immortal to kill Frieza; now, the damned emperor was dead, and the saiyan race was avenged- if not by him (a surge of anger and regret twisted in his stomach, but he pushed it back down) then at least by a member of his own breed, by blood if not spirit. Eventually, he'd started chasing the goal to prove to himself that he could get it, more than for immortality itself- and he'd found that getting it wasn't nearly so glorious or satisfying as he'd thought. He'd found more in the chase than he'd gotten at the end.

And so he hadn't even been upset when it was gone. A part of him was glad.

He could've trained more, but it didn't look like Goku really wanted to. The taller saiyan was wandering away, so Vegeta wandered after him, sliding back beside his long-term rival when the human-minded saiyan slowed down for him. "What're you thinking about?"

For a second, Vegeta didn't want to reply- on the other hand, Goku wouldn't shut up until he did. So he truthfully, if a trifle waspishly, replied, "Dying."

Goku blanched. "Ah."

Then, something strange occurred to Vegeta. "You'll be going to Otherworld," he pointed out suddenly, by the look on Goku's face, something he had already considered. "I'll be going to Hell."

"Well, maybe, if Ky'ale could get up to Otherworld..." He could see it was a weak argument before Vegeta could even answer.

"She was young. Too young to make the choice." Vegeta's smile became a little more pointed, like a knife in his own heart. But Vegeta didn't have a heart, did he? Did he? He'd changed in more ways than he cared to identify. He glanced over at Kakarotto and was a little surprised by the emotion in his features. "Does it bother you?"

"We'll jump that hurdle when we get to it, I guess," was the other man's frail response. Then he stopped. They were in the side yard, maybe a hundred feet from the house, two hundred from the GR. His face was wrought with a sudden, poignant concern. "You don't regret it, do you?"

Vegeta shrugged, then, seeing that Goku wasn't going to give it up, said, "No. Not really." Which was almost the complete truth. The corners of Goku's mouth tucked in slightly, his eyebrows drawing together. "I survived," Vegeta growled, suddenly almost defensive of his own personality. "I have no regrets."

He was doing it again. Goku backed off. "That's fair," he lied. Vegeta heard the infidelity in his voice and rolled his eyes, turned to walk away.

Goku lunged forward and pressed his hand against the older saiyan's back. Vegeta stopped. "Hey, I'm sorry, alright? I shouldn't have asked." Vegeta didn't turn around. "But sometimes I don't know what to say to you, Vegeta."

They stood like that for a second; then, slowly, the tension eased out of Vegeta's posture and he turned around, letting Goku say what he obviously needed to.

"Damn it, Vegeta. I love you. I told you I didn't need for you to feel the same way, and I guess I still don't, but god damn. I don't know _how_ you feel about me anymore." He spread his hands, imploringly, but the caustic laugh sounded almost saiyan. "One second, you hate me, the next second you like me. I can't figure you out."

He hadn't ever been able to figure the saiyan out. He'd never been able to fully understand him- although in some ways they thought so similarly it was like uncovering a lost twin. They were the last standing members of a fallen species, so couldn't the prince open up, just a little?

As for Vegeta- he didn't know what to think. His mind was a maelstrom, his concious mind alighting on one topic after another, never pausing to consider. Hate, rage, fear, want, and that last, most deplorable emotion of them all- it was all a tornado of semi-concious contemplation. He growled, then lunged forward and kissed the taller saiyan squarely on the mouth, quick, closed-mouthed and pulsatingly emotional.

Goku pulled away and blinked in surprise. "What was that for?" he asked, his voice stressed until it cracked. Vegeta's stomach twisted in mingled sympathy and revulsion. He didn't think he could stand it if Goku broke down.

"Pick a four letter word," Vegeta growled in response. Something bright glittered behind the ice in his eyes.

_THE END_


End file.
